Vladimir Putin is not attacking NATO like a murderer is not attacking his victim’s family.
NATO is part of an interconnected group of peaceful cooperating agreements created since World War II to ensure peace and prosperity for a large part of the world population. An earlier try, before the war, was the League of Nations, but the U.S. Senate was skeptical, and without U.S. support it just did not work. During WWII, the allies called themselves The United Nations; after the war they expanded it with very lofty goals including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Unfortunately, they did not see far enough and designed the Security Council with five permanent members who had collaborated against the Nazis. They gave those permanent members power to veto almost any decision. Two of those five, China and the USSR underwent revolutions and no longer exist in their 1948 form. The USSR used the veto promiscuously. One of the five permanent members is hard to think of as a major power today.
A revolution in China expelled the most recent of its many governments (dynasties) to the island of Taiwan and a new Communist government, controlled by Mao Zedong, was recognized and given the seat. It is the government we think of today as China. It is definitely not democratic, but has delusions of its own manifest destiny, expansion and ethnic purity.
Although the USSR made great sacrifices and was a major ally in the war against Hitler. Joseph Stalin had amassed so much power that it too was as brutally dictatorial as Nazi Germany. The USSR starved Ukraine to feed Moscow and murdered over 20 million. That undemocratic government was in turn overturned by a short-lived republican government that deteriorated into a thugocracy run by Putin. It is almost indistinguishable from organized crime. Putin and his favored thugs live in unimaginable luxury but revocable any time at his whim. Putin’s official public appearances are surrounded by Tsarist pageantry of huge gilded halls. It still uses the U.N. veto promiscuously. The other still permanent member is France. France that could not pick a side for most of WWII.
Giving those two autocratic governments veto power made the U.N. powerless to deal with any issue in which either had a stake. That mistake necessitated a military alliance to stand up to Stalin and his successors just as the Allied United Nations stood up to the Axis: Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini. The U.S. and U.K. organized NATO with 10 other allies. NATO now has 30 members dedicated to: Security in our daily lives, the key to our well-being. NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pointed out that the USSR seat might not rightly belong to Russia at all, since Russia has not been officially ever admitted to the U.N. Yeltsin cockroached the USSR seat. Ukraine might almost as logically deserve it since Ukraine along with Russia and Belarus (nee Byelorussia, aka White-Russia) co-founded the USSR. Ukraine is often translated as borderland, but Ukrainian is a distinct language, so maybe it’s not a translation, just a usage like Seven Seas.
The U.N. does great many good things through its many sub-agencies, financed mostly by the U.S., but its Security Council function is like three labradoodles, two wolves and 15 bunnies voting on what to have for dinner. Some bunnies do have a secret weapon, no alternative. If Ukrainian farmers are unable to plant, somebody will go hungry, is that an attack on them?
Fortunately, Putin’s Potemkin military is falling apart, much of their equipment is substandard, Chinese knock-offs, food and fuel are in short supply, soldiers are eating outdated MREs; Defections are common and morale is low. Turkish drones destroy Russian tanks or farmers confiscate them. A small Border Police outpost on Snake Island sank a Russian warship (gunboat). Now Putin is asking China for help!
Russia has always been a tough negotiator, because Russians had so little to lose; this time though the people have tasted western lifestyle. Ultimatum time: Putin, take your army home, clean up the mess or face tougher endless sanctions.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com