Daily Archives: 21 December 2021

Russia’s West Surrender Security Guarantees

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Russia has laid out its latest demand for security guarantees.

  • No North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion further eastward to include Ukraine
  • abandon all NATO military activities in all of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia
  • no deployment of additional NATO troops and weapons outside the countries in which they were before any Eastern bloc nations joined the alliance in May 1997
  • each side should refrain from deploying intermediate and shorter-range missiles where they can hit the territory of the other side
  • not use territory of another state to carry out an armed attack against one another

Will Russia remove its theater nuclear weapons and its conventional weapons from Kaliningrad? Of course not.

Will Russia remove its military forces to east of the Urals? Of course not.

Will Russia withdraw from Crimea and eastern Ukraine? Of course not.

There’s nothing mutual about these guarantees; they’re more a Security of Russia Guarantee, while leaving Russia a free hand in moving west.

Russia’s demands should be a non-starter and not even discussed except for a one-word statement: “No.” In fact, these demands should be answered with an offer to Ukraine to join NATO.

But this is the Biden-Harris administration, and Germany has far too much influence in NATO.

Laws and Rules

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The Progressive-Democrats are unhappy that they haven’t had their way with our government, and so they insist on changing the rules so they can get their way forever after. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) took note of this from the Senate floor last Thursday.

In the span of a few hours, one Senate Democrat had renewed calls to nuke the Senate and break the rules, and another published a national op-ed arguing that Democrats should attack the rule of law and pack the Supreme Court.
Two frontal assaults on two branches of government, proposed in the space of about two hours. Entire generations of statesmen would have seen either one of those unhinged proposals as Armageddon for our institutions.

But this is the Progressive-Democratic Party. If they can’t have their way within the law, within the rules, they’ll change the law, change the rules. If they can’t change the law or the rules, they’ll simply ignore them.

The government of the People’s Republic of China, and of the predecessor nation on the mainland, operates and operated the same way. If the men of those governments don’t—didn’t then—like the outcomes of specific laws, or if the people become too unruly (in those government men’s eyes) under existing law, they alter the law to suit those men.

This is not to say the Progressive-Democratic Party is the same as the Communist Party of China. The attitudes and techniques of the two, though, are quite similar, and they produce the same outcome: a nation whose citizens are ruled by government men rather than a nation under law where all citizens are equal, including those government men, and government is subordinate to the citizens.