This is off-topic, but I was reminded today in preparing for a legislative hearing on a healthcare issue that folks have completely forgotten that this entire issue was resolved in a court case in 1998 with the exact same company involved — but current legislators apparently have forgotten it or were not in office then.
That takes me to the other big thing that is in controversy right now — and nobody is mentioning an important part of it:
Bill Clinton in 1994 (and then the Obama administration in 2009, reaffirmed it) gave official diplomatic assurances to Ukraine that their borders would be safe in exchange for the Ukrainians gutting their army and completely doing away with their sizable nuclear deterrent. There were a number of signatories to this agreement: the UK, the Ukrainian prime minister, the Russian Federation, Bill Clinton, and there was the Chinese.
From the UK Daily Mail:
“As a US senator, Barack Obama won $48 million in federal funding to help Ukraine destroy thousands of tons of guns and ammunition — weapons which are now unavailable to the Ukrainian army as it faces down Russian President Vladimir Putin during his invasion of Crimea.”
There is also the historical issue of Stalin intentionally starving 20,000,000 Ukrainians to death following WWII because he did not think the region was loyal to Russia after its conquest. He then moved ethnic Russians into the region to solidify his hold on the country.
I am not advocating a particular solution to the problem, I am just lamenting the total lack of historical context in the coverage of the invasion, and the fact that apparently no one has considered what this event does to all treaties worldwide.
Stephen A. Frew
Publisher
Thanks for sharing, Stephen…. I’m leaving my personal email as I’d like to follow your editorials and publishings at a personal level, as well as at work. Please keep it going and God bless YOU for taking a position as this.
Our family rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down, when the Soviet Union collapsed, and especially when Lithuania (the country of origin of all four of our grandparents) seceded. Every time we celebrated our mother would remind us to “never trust a Russian.” She was correct.