Russia attacks Ukraine!
The Thursday Thoughts...
Well, the Ol' Hobbstradamus got it wrong as overnight, Russian forces, at the demand of dictator Vladimir Putin, launched a full-scale invasion in Ukraine that has already led to mass deaths of Ukrainian military forces and civilians.
While President Joe Biden and leaders of America's NATO allies have condemned the attack and promise that Russia will face severe repercussions, Putin seems totally unfazed and has promised to escalate should Western nations seek to interfere militarily.
Why Ukraine, why now?
Vladimir Putin, like many from the old Soviet Union, believes that an independent Ukraine is historically and culturally a part of Russia. An analogy to his position is to imagine, if you will, if the State of Texas followed through with its occasional secession chatter in the modern era, most in the United States would still consider Texas and Texans as fellow Americans—even if no military action was taken to force them back into the fold.
A second crucial historical note is that during World War II, the United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain were the major Allies in the fight against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and his Axis co-horts in Italy and Japan. Of the three, the Soviet Union took the worst of German military power and casualties, with well over 27 million of their comrades killed in combat, civilian attacks, and during Hitler's murderous Holocaust.
As World War II drew to a close in 1945, the once allies soon experienced a schism, noted best by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's famous quip that a communist "Iron Curtain" had descended upon Eastern Europe.
Not long thereafter, the Soviet Union absorbed the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; occupied Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary; exerted control of the eastern half of Germany, which was juxtaposed to the western half that remained under American, British, and French control (and subsequent influence) until Germany was reunited nearly 50 years after the war's end.
During the intervening 50 years, the industrial world engaged in what was referred to as the "Cold War," one in which Soviet premiers and American presidents waged nuclear arms build-ups on multiple continents and most ominously, the Cuban-Soviet missile crisis of 1962 that almost ignited World War III. During this period, America and her European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact to counter NATO's existence. While NATO and the Warsaw Pact never actually fought, the U.S. and the Soviet Union did engage in smaller "hot wars," including ones in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan—to name a few. Lest we forget that the latter two ended in defeat for the powerful American and Soviet militaries, respectively, that were ill prepared to wage protracted guerilla wars against committed partisans equipped with weapons from the two Super Power foes.
As such, this historical backdrop makes it clear to note that Putin's invasion this morning is not about any existential threat to Russia or the Russian people, as has been his lie in the preceding weeks, but a naked act of aggression to expand Russia's territorial map and, potentially, control of Ukraine's oil and gas reserves.
Putin, a former KGB agent, has consistently lamented his belief that the 1990’s, a period when the Soviet Union broke up with former "states" like Ukraine declaring independence, was a period in which the West "won" the Cold War and robbed the Soviet Union of what Putin remembers as its being a Super Power within its own right. That, and the recent NATO absorption of former Warsaw Pact nations like Poland, has provided a pretext for Putin's opposition to Ukraine joining NATO.
Will NATO fight?
As I have already miscalculated Putin's resolve to wage war in Ukraine, I am hesitant to predict what the NATO response will be in the wake of Russia's naked aggression.
But I will note that part of Ukraine's disadvantage today is that it does not have nuclear weapons to defend its sovereignty. This fact is interesting because when Ukraine declared independence in the 1990's, at the time, it was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world—trailing only the U.S. and independent Russia! Ukraine subsequently agreed to remove nuclear weapons from its soil when it signed the Budapest Memorandum, a treaty in which the U.S., Great Britain, and the new (and pro-West) Russian Republic agreed to provide security to Ukraine.
The flaw in the Budapest Memorandum is that Anglo-American diplomats could not have predicted the rise of Putin, or his desired recrudescence of Russia's Soviet Union past! Nevertheless, as it stands today, the U.S. and Great Britain, at least in theory, are duty bound to defend Ukraine per the Memorandum.
The problem for both the U.S. and Great Britain is that nearly two decades of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left many citizens in both nations weary of war and hesitant to engage. Further, sensing that Putin is willing to forego his own Russian people's aversion for war with their Ukrainian relatives and friends by invading anyway, it is possible that Putin, if NATO intercedes, would use tactical nuclear weapons should his military start to lose its advantage in the field.
We will not have to guess for long; President Biden will address the world later today and outline the American response, which could include crippling economic sanctions, seizure of Russian banking assets, military equipment assistance to Ukraine, and leading the cause to render Russia a pariah on the world stage.
Stay tuned...
Black History Hobbservations
Speaking of the Cold War, lest we forget the efforts of famed Black American diplomat Ralph Bunche in leading peace efforts worldwide, but specifically in a Middle East that would eventually become an ideological battleground between the West (NATO) and East (Warsaw Pact).
Ralph Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan on August 4, 1904, the son of Fred Bunch, a barber, and Olive Bunche, a musician. The family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico when Ralph was a small child where his parents died, an event that led to his moving to Los Angeles, California to live with his maternal grandmother.
A gifted student with a penchant for history and politics, Bunche was valedictorian of his high school class and earned an athletic scholarship in football to UCLA, where he also worked part time as a janitor to defray costs of living. Bunche graduated from UCLA summa cum laude in 1927 and earned a scholarship to study political science at Harvard University, where he earned a masters degree in 1928. Bunche then spent the next six years as a faculty member at Howard University in Washington D.C. and as a doctoral student at Harvard, which he finished in 1934. Over the next 16 years, Bunche served as chair of the political science department at Howard while also assisting Swedish Sociologist Gunnar Myrdal in his study on Blacks in America that culminated with Myrdal's book"An American Dilemma."
During the 1940's, Bunche served as a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Kitchen Cabinet" which advised the president on issues pertinent to Blacks.
Following World War II, after the newly formed United Nations carved a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the ensuing war threatened the fragile new state of Israel. Bunche was tapped by then UN Secretary-General Tygve Lie to assist (and later head) negotiations to end the war between several Arab states and Israel. After nearly a year of intense negotiations, Bunche coerced the two parties to sign an armistice agreement. Bunche was hailed a hero worldwide and returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
For his efforts, Bunche was bestowed the NAACP's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, and in 1950, Bunche became the first of only seven Black men in history to earn the Nobel Peace Prize (later joined by Chief Albert Luthuli of South Africa; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; South African Bishop Desmond Tutu; South African prisoner and later President Nelson Mandela; former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and President Barack H. Obama).
Following his Nobel acceptance, Bunche continued to teach at Howard and later Harvard University. Despite his fame, Bunche was not inoculated from racism, as evidenced by his rejection from the West Side Tennis Club in Queens, New York upon applying for private membership. The club later fired the administrator once the public furor erupted, but Bunche declined as he felt that his inclusion was on account of his fame--not equality.
Bunche continued his advocacy for equal rights for Blacks in America, which included his help with leading the 1963 March on Washington—and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march.
Bunche died in New York in 1971.
Thank you for subscribing to the Hobbservation Point—stay tuned for the latest on the Russian invasion of Ukraine!
Learned a lot today, Prof. Hobbs. I love reading about outliers, and Bunche was obviously one.
I also didn’t know about the Budapest Memorandum. Was wondering who was suppose to support Ukraine after they gave up their nukes.
Hard to predict what a madman will do except defy logic 🙃