25A012 The Russians Aren't Coming by Jim Davies, 3/25/2025

While the new President is no Libertarian, I supported his election and am glad he won; he is to his predecessor as day is to night, and he made two excellent promises I liked: to set Ross Ulbricht free from his barbaric prison sentence, and to get the War of Russian Independence finished quickly.

He fulfilled the first of those within one day of inauguration, and is working 24/7 on the second of them despite heavy opposition. Not bad!

That opposition comes from the UkeGov, from all but two of the European members of NATO, and of course from remnants of the Biden régime.

That the Kiev Gang, led by Vlad Zelensky, opposes peace when its forces are steadily losing ground to Russian advances, is odd; its public support has been eroding fast and the heavy casualty rate has made Ukrainians fed up with the continuing, pointless war. Those facts don't seem to have penetrated the minds of the politicians yet; Zelensky's term as President has long ago expired, yet there is no call for him to hold an election (which he'd lose) nor just to get the war ended on the best terms that can be negotiated.

US Democrat opposition is less surprising; that Party has invested its future in continuing the War and in serving its generous supporters in the armaments industry. RINOs have given them help.

The most interesting opponents of peace are the European governments, excepting those of Hungary and Slovakia. The British and French ones are especially vigorous in their hostility to Russia and to ending the War. Without a shred of evidence and in the teeth of what Mr Putin has emphatically said, they claim that after defeating Ukraine, Russia would invade Europe. In Britain, that is true of both Left and Right; the supposedly Conservative government that lost last year's election was no less Russophobic than its Labour successors. Only the new Reform Party, led by the Brexit hero Nigel Farage, is pro-peace. Happily it is gaining ground - but not yet enough to change that policy.

The notion that Russia is preparing to invade Europe and take back at least what the USSR lost in 1990 is absurd and Putin has repeatedly confirmed that; the problem there is that they don't trust him - and he is a politician, after all. There are however several reasons why he's probably telling the truth.

First, it's a pain to occupy a country and keep down a resentful population. He knows that already, having worked for the Soviets in the KGB. Why buy trouble, when restoring and extending a healthy trade relationship would bring his country a decent net gain?

Second, in response to the trade embargoes the FedGov and the EU placed on the Russian Federation since 2022 his policy has been to strengthen trading ties with the "Global South" - China, India, the Pacific Rim, and for the longer term, Africa and Brazil. It would make sense to restore trade with Europe, but Russia does not depend on doing so. Its biggest business is the export of oil and gas, and China in particular has a huge and growing thirst for both, so the EU trade isn't essential to Russia.

Third, in two centuries and with the single exception of an attack on Finland in 1939 by the USSR, Russia has not begun a war, to gain territory or for any other reason. It has the largest land mass in the world and doesn't need to. Its people are patriotic and have shown they will fiercely defend what they have, hence the resentment about NATO expansion, but unless a Napoleon or a Hitler invades the Motherland, they don't wage war. The Russians aren't coming.

So at present I just don't see why the Pols running NATO are worried, unless it is just a childish resentment about having backed the wrong horse, or perhaps because if this war ends it would disrupt their plans for a Great Reset.

Historian Cyril Amar has a neat summary: "If [European NATO] should really go ahead with an attempt to replace US support for Ukraine, the war will continue. But without the US and, probably, even against the backdrop of a flourishing Russian-American détente. Good luck with that one."