US-Russia Cold War commentary
Dear Editor, Some of the commentary circulating on the war in Ukraine seems to bend ‘factual’ utterances, smothering them with a distorted and blinkered emphasis on Russian ‘victimhood’ at the hands of West and NATO.
Apart from glossing over the obviously innate right of modern-day Ukraine to self-determination, whether that be titled towards West or East, they seem to forget the regular erstwhile annexation tendencies of Russia, for no apparent reason other than they want to look big, feel big and act big beyond their natural remit as a solo geopolitical entity. Their blatant lies and patent distortions of the recent realities pertaining, combine to exclude them from any sense of trustworthiness or patient forbearance.
Why should everyone else acquiesce and succumb to such repetitive adventurist habits? Such expansionist patterns have traditionally only established autocratic ‘ behemothic’ conglomerative entities, where liberal, democratic human rights are non-existent, and where corruptive control by the few outstrip any notions of decency, decorum or democracy for the many. The current sham democracy in train in Putin’s Russia serves only to satisfy his own greed and lust for power, alongside his corrupted oligarchic alickadoos with a crassly bribed so-called ‘parliament of parrots’, rubberstamping his paltry and pathetic permanence of tenure.
While no democratic system anywhere has ever managed to fully nail the authentic core spirit of true and pure democracy, the Russian modus operandi is so far askew from the notion, that it has no semblance of fairness, equitable opportunity, transparent governance or ethical behaviour in the round. Witnessing Putin referencing Lenin and Stalin in prelude to this ‘not so camouflaged’ invasion, one must surely bewilder at the basic state of his mental health.
Joseph Stalin was, by any standards of any decent kind, an absolute ‘non-human’ who visited so much murderous ruthlessness on all who stood between himself and his vacuous obsessive greed for power. To quote such a felonious monster as someone who had foregone even more expansionist opportunities, betrays the bleak insanity of Putin’s accumulative power-grabbing.
All this said, one of course cannot conclude that the West (i.e. the US in particular) has been fully angelic in its hustling for advantage, economical or military, and certainly has operated a tad duplicitously betimes for sure, like many other global entities. But in comparison to the Russian distortion of both its place in the world and its self-presumed controlling dominance of others (its own citizens included), there is no contest in the disingenuous machination stakes.
Some people talk of ‘ Western folly’ as a key contributor to the current war. Surely they must try to see the ‘folly of Putin’s ways’. Anything short of that is a tilt towards validating the historic corruptive barbarism practised by successive Russian regimes over so many years and in so many incarnations. All dubiously adrift of humane consideration.... and some!
Yours etc., Jim Cosgrove, Chapel Street, Lismore, Co. Waterford.