1991 And All That

NATO is moving troops into Eastern Europe for what, exactly? Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and has never stood the slightest chance of becoming one.

There is literally more likelihood of Russia’s becoming a member of NATO than there is of Ukraine’s. There always has been.

We are not going to war with Russia, and that is just that. The idea is too preposterous for words.

Therefore, we are never going to contract a defensive arrangement with anywhere that might conceivably go to war with Russia.

Again, that is just that. It always has been.

Or, at any rate, it has been since 1991. The wonder is that the post-1991 situation has lasted an entire generation. It will not last another one. As we now see.

We ought never to have indulged the absurd notion of the “sovereign nationhood” of the purely administrative units that merely happened to be in place when that of which they were the purely administrative units, the Soviet Union, happened to collapse.

But we did.

However, we are not going to have to do so for very much longer. And even our having done so in the past has never entailed any military obligation towards them. No such obligation has ever existed.

Ask almost anyone in the West where Ukraine was, and they would give a one-word answer. We all know what that one word would be.

As for the Baltic States, the fact that they were ever allowed into NATO, unnecessarily provocative to Russia thought that was, demonstrates that Russia has no territorial designs on them.

If there had been any chance of a war with Russia over them, then they would never have been let in. Even now, we would not actually go to war with Russia over them.

Some get-out clause would be found, if necessary. But without or without that, the essential message would be, “Because we are not going to do it, so there.”

We are not going to war with Russia, and that is that. The idea is too preposterous for words.

Speaking of the Baltic States, even if the large and mistreated Russian minorities, especially in Latvia, really were products of the Soviet Period only, then that would still mean that they had existed for as long as, or longer than, most of the non-white population of the United Kingdom, much of the Hispanic population of the United States, most of the Australian population (now more than half the total) that is not of British or Irish extraction, a fair chunk of the population of post-independence India, a very sizeable minority of the population of Pakistan, most of the Jewish population of what is now the State of Israel, and practically the entire Jewish population of the West Bank.

It is no wonder that Israel abstained rather than vote to condemn the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia, of which it was part until six years after Israel’s creation. The loonyhawks really have lost when they have lost Israel, and Netanyahu’s Israel at that.

Even on the loonyhawks’ own terms, the stateless Russian minority in Latvia is therefore also far, far, far older than most of the Polish minority in Britain. As is the stateless Polish minority in Latvia; like the Russian one, it is in fact far, far, far older than the loonyhawks will allow.

As is the stateless Belorussian minority in Latvia. As is the stateless Lithuanian – yes, Lithuanian – minority in Latvia. As is the stateless Jewish minority in Latvia. As is the stateless Roma minority in Latvia. And as the stateless, er, Ukrainian minority in Latvia.

All of which gives some context to the half-educated attempts to suggest that is un-Catholic not to side with the loonyhawks against Russia.

They have been trying that one for years in the Middle East, hoping that no one would notice the existence of the ancient indigenous Christian, not least Catholic, and not least (as in Ukraine) Byzantine Rite Catholic communities.

Byzantine Catholics, the Melkites, are especially numerous in Syria and among the Palestinians. Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross is a Palestinian Melkite working in Syria.

Any ostensible loonyhawk concern for Catholics of the Byzantine Rite elsewhere may therefore be described using various terms, none of them complimentary.

For that matter, so is their concern for Jews.

They screamed “anti-Semitism” at the slightest questioning of the Iraq War, thereby significantly cheapening the word.

They are now doing the same over Iran, a country with a reserved parliamentary seat for its extremely ancient Jewish community.

Yet it is 20 years since they demanded military action to support a state, of questionable legitimacy in the first place, which constitutionally barred and bars Jews and Gypsies from the Senate and from the Presidency, having been created by blackshirted heirs and even veterans of the SS.

It is almost as long since they secured such action in the same interest elsewhere in what was once Yugoslavia.

Today, they want to intervene in support Svoboda and Pravy Sektor, and in principle in defence of a country which imposes a constitutional ban on citizenship for its Jews and Gypsies while holding annual parades and wreath-laying ceremonies in honour its SS Division.

Those parades and wreath-laying ceremonies are organised by David Cameron’s allies in the European Parliament. How long before those allies are joined by Svoboda, by Pravy Sektor, by the Jew and Gypsy-excluding heirs of Alija Izetbegović, and by the rather worse supporters of Hashim Thaçi?

It is no wonder that Israel abstained rather than vote to condemn the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia, of which it was part until six years after Israel’s creation. The loonyhawks really have lost when they have lost Israel, and Netanyahu’s Israel at that.