Scuttlebutt: Thinking . . .
by Mitch McFarland
This has been a weird month for me. Maybe you too. In addition to the Putin war there is the diminishing Covid epidemic plus my perplexing bathroom remodel. Each of these things have unsettled my mind and made doing my column this month harder than usual. Generally, I write about what I have been thinking lately is important, but when everything seems important, then nothing does.
What are we suppose to think about Covid? We are told it is moving from pandemic to endemic, which means we shouldn't be as worried as we have been, yet Covid still continues coursing through various populations. There is even a new Omicron variant we may have to deal with. Just as we didn't really know how to accommodate the arrival of Covid, many are confused about how to deal with its subsiding.
There is anxiety about mask wearing. Some places still require them and others don't. I've read that many students are anxious about removing masks for fear of revealing how their faces changed over the last two years. How will they be received by their peers? And what about the politics of mask wearing? One person recently stated that they wear their mask so that people don't think they are Trump supporters. Others don't wear masks to show their “independence”.
As for me, the “end” of Covid is more psychological than political. After over 700 days of relative isolation I have become quite comfortable with what has become a very rigid routine. It is a routine entirely of my own making and generally consists of things I like doing. As I am retired, employment is not a concern. My comfortable routine is not easy to give up. Whereas I used to go to town and have a social outing at Cove Coffee every day, I now only leave home once or twice a week and only to shop and only briefly. The major social contact I have has is by attending memorials for friends who have died (way too many). I feel uneasy about returning to my previous “life”, not because I am particularly worried about getting sick (I am double vaxxed and boosted), but because I am in such a groove (or is it rut) that changing gears seems hard and unnecessary. At times I can imagine just staying home for the rest of my life and being happy. Other times, of course, I want to get the hell out of here and go on an extended trip.
The war in Ukraine is certainly unsettling. It is hard to imagine how this is all going to turn out. Part of the reason for that is because we citizens know very little about the inner workings of Russian political society, i.e. Putin. It takes some effort to get beyond the line pursued by our mass media and U.S. government sources, but it is fair to say that the word most often used to describe the Russian offensive—“unprovoked”—is misleading.
My father always used to say that there are always two sides to every story. Not that each side is equally correct or acceptable, but that there is generally a motive for every action. That seems to be the case here.
In the early 90's when the Soviet Union was breaking up and Germany was being re-unified, western leaders were all over themselves assuring the Soviet leadership that everything would be all right.
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification. The Soviets were worried about NATO at their border, so assurances were given that no NATO armaments would be placed in the former East Germany.
Margaret Thatcher reassured Shevardnadze that the process would not yield winners and losers. Instead, it would produce a new legitimate European structure – one that would be “ inclusive, not exclusive.”
At a February 10, 1990, meeting in Moscow between West German chancellor Kohl and the Soviets, Gorbachev assented in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east and was told “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.”
In March 1991, according to the diary of the British ambassador to Moscow, British Prime Minister John Major personally assured Gorbachev, “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” “We must find ways to give the Soviet Union confidence that its security would be assured adding “Nothing of the sort will happen.”
Since then Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia have joined NATO, covering the entire western border of Russia. Meanwhile the US has installed the The Mark 41 missile launcher in Romania and soon in Poland. It is designed to be a defensive weapon to shoot down incoming missiles, but it does have the ability to fire Tomahawk missiles into the Russian heartland. And then, later,Trump cancelled talks on a new INF Treaty (Intermediate Nuclear Forces).
Famed diplomat George Kennan, architect of the US Cold War strategy had this to say about NATO expansion: “I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”
Nothing I have written here should lead anyone to think that I endorse Putin's military incursion and the bombing of civilian targets. Quite the contrary. Putin obviously has plenty of blame for the situation in Eastern Europe, plus he has a HUGE ego problem. We have all seen the macho posturing of Putin shirtless riding a horse or fishing, but the most telling thing I have seen is the preposterous hockey game in which professional Russian hockey players allowed him to score numerous goals then skate around the ice with a big shit-eating grin on his face like he had actually accomplished something. How pathetic. It reminds me of the Emperor's New Clothes story.
