MOgreland

Just a quickie heads-up: I am looking into the issue of what is going on in the Ukraine and Crimea, what with Russia looking like it has already staged a takeover of parts of the country of the Ukraine, and the U.S. and Europe really being pretty powerless to do anything about it. I want to give it a couple of days for the issue to develop, and so that I can do some reading up on the matter, and I will post on this blog my opinions about what it means to the United States and to Americans in the future. This is important because the world we leave to our children is a huge responsibility, and we at least sometimes have to discuss it seriously.

The real problem seems to be that there are treaties and therefore obligations tying Europe and the United States to the nations bordering Ukraine on their West, between Ukraine and Europe, and that the end results of what may happen there could possibly destabilize the political situation between Europe, Russia, the U.S., and even China.

This is very important for several reasons:

1) The current balance of world power, especially since the breakup of the Soviet Union, is such that the likelihood of global conflict by global  powers, such as the U.S. and Russia, not just regional powers such as China and Iran, has not been overbearingly high because no one wanted to see another epic world war, and that there were some means in place to prevent the major players from acting short of a nuclear exchange, even if those means were only that the major players did not have the political or military means or the courage to act.

The problem with the post-Cold War world fragmenting the way that it has since the Soviet Union broke up and since the two Gulf Wars happened is that there are now more opportunities for powers to act in less than global-scale conflicts and the problem with that is that what allows one power to act is that same factor that prevents others from preventing action from happening, i.e. that a fragmented geopolitical world makes it much harder to take political or military action without stepping on a lot of other people's toes at the same time.

It is the old issue of 'buffer zones' that the Romans invented so long ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

2)  Another important point is that there are in fact treaties tying the U.S. and Europe to Eastern European states beyond Poland and much closer to Russia geographically, and there are problems with those treaties: If the UK and US uphold those treaties when those nations demand action, and we do not do so, what will that do to western prestige? Meaning, if the U.S. cannot uphold its international obligations, how will that negatively effect its power in the world, and might that not further destabilize the international political structure?

However, the simple fact is that we have no military means to force the Russians' hand, and damned few other means to alter Russia's behaviors to boot. It is one thing for Americans to complain that their leaders are do-nothings at home during an election cycle, it is a vastly other thing for an America that wants to be seen as the leader of the free world to be proven unable to do anything when it counts. By the way, this is one big reason why we got involved in wars in the Middle East and are so involved in the Syria issue, too.

3) Beyond that, the last time nations tangled themselves in treaty obligations that made a mess of things, it led to the last two World Wars. I don't think an epic failure in this issue would do that immediately, but it could lead to an escalating breakdown of the connections between nations and groups of nations that since World War II has prevented another global world war, if not horrible regional and local conflicts.

4) What about the United Nations? The status and effectiveness of this body has taken a pounding off and on since the Vietnam War/the Second Indochina War, 1955-1975. If the international body politic starts to come apart at the seams because Europe and the U.S. are seen as ineffective, Russia proves to be expansionistic at even its own peril in the end, and other nations, radical or not, 'freedom fighters' and terrorists of all stripes are therefore able to run amok with no means of checking them because all of the major players have lost whatever credibility they may have had, what happens then?

You know, I said that I was going to start this blog ostensibly to write about science fiction and fantasy, and I will, but I will also write about important real-world issues like this, because the best science fiction always addresses real-world issues seriously, just from a distance in light years or centuries. One of my main goals here is to address The American Dream, and a world at war is certainly an American Nightmare. Such is the stuff good Science Fiction is made of.

As you can see, I have dragged on far too long just introducing the topic, and that is why I will write about it in several separate posts in the coming days and weeks. Please come back for more, tell your friends, and comment when you feel you have something to say!

Thank you very much for your time!