Everyone is Suddenly an Expert on Ukraine

After months of posturing by Jens Stoltenberg and other NATO clowns, Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine the other day, and the response by the West has been revealing. NATO is divided. The EU indecisive, and the US is nowhere to be seen. The conflict is likely over before any of the tough talking goons are able to muster a response. My premonition from ten weeks ago has so far played out as envisioned. While everyone was busy talking in the West, the Russians made their preparations, and they are now just about to wrap things up as far as Ukraine is concerned.

My guess is that the Ukraine government will fold. There will be a meeting where Putin dictates a new doctrine, after which things will return to normal. Putin will insist on a Russia friendly solution where Ukraine remains a neutral buffer state. Ukraine will officially cede control of Crimea to Russia. They may also give up a few other eastern territories. But the rest of Ukraine will remain independent in much the same way that Finland remained independent from Russia after the second world war.

Had Ukraine avoided a conflict with Russia from the start, and accepted a Finland solution as proposed by Putin many years ago, all of this could have been avoided. What has happened is the result of inept diplomacy. However, I'm not an expert on this, and my opinion is not that of the majority. My Facebook wall is full of insights from people who up to recently were experts on the virus. Pretty much everyone seems to agree with the mainstream narrative. Putin is an evil expansionist dictator, and the analysis ends at that. There's no historical context or any attempts to see the situation from a different angle.

Meanwhile, western leaders keep making things difficult for themselves. They are into green policies that make us dependent on Russian gas. Production is outsourced to China, making trade sanctions pretty much impossible. It is Russia that's running a surplus on trade with the West. It's not the other way around. The only thing we got is a bloated financial market which Russia have largely avoided. Putin swapped Russia's Western papers for gold back in June 2021.

The West is being exposed as a paper tiger. We have nothing but paper assets and woke policies, and there isn't much of anything we can do since we have nothing the Russian's can't live without.

Mark Esper with Jens Stoltenberg

By U.S. Secretary of Defense - 200212-D-AP390-6107, CC BY 2.0, Link