Russia, USA, NATO and the New Reality of Ukraine

Since the commencement of the Russo-Ukranian war, I have followed closely the Western reactions, propaganda, sanctions, clampdowns and the rest and came away with the realism that the West actually is a paper Tiger.

It can fiercely bark but cannot bite when the flares come down into a crescendo. I can also see that the Western mojo acquired strength when matters or rows are between the sphere and such weakling or small nations as Mexico, Nicaragua, Maylasia, Burma, Iran and others who cannot in reality tone up their muscles for a real square up or combat.

I have been watching with despair as Ukraine is being eaten up, surely and steadily by the Russian forces. The much hackneyed Western NATO umbrella is missing, infact, shut and rolled up. Ukraine has made appeals for aids, humanitarian and military, with not much success beyond platitudes on the media. I call media aids. Western megaphones as CNN, BBC, Canal France, Al Jazeera and others are SERIALLY inspite of boredom inundating us with analysis, insights, Russian War Crimes diaries, Russian economic meltdown, horrendous structural teardown of the Ukranian nation and other likes without any strand of physical assistances rolling in from the West. Oh yes, there have been repeated shouts of arms assistances but these appear largely as prospects and promises with no massive physical supply lines. In 1973, American C-130 planes were touching down on Tel Aviv every 10 minutes. That was aid. Massive aid.

Russia has credutably placed a no-fly zone entirely over Ukraine to which the US, Britain, France or Germany could dare not ignore. I feel so troubled as Russia is getting away, with no apologies, with this humongous braggadocio of invasion, despoilation, degradation and runaway War Crimes without credible challenge or calls..

Arguments are rolling on how the Western restraint is meant to preserve humanity from extinction. Russia it is believed, could without any second guess press her nuclear buttons for a world fry many times over. I do not buy this story. Eliminating the entire world including Russia is not a hero’s option. Putin in his daredevilry will not play the card. Somewhere in the Psalms there came a query, “…will the dead praise thee? Would they declare thy truth from deep in the graves…? Putin would not mount his Hero’s Parade from deep in the smithereens of the nuclear Holocaust. A world billowing with smokes and clouds of nuclear burnout, wild fires, crumbled megapolis, laden seas of dead mammals and humans cascading onto the beaches of dead rotten beings on the continental shorelines. Neither Putin nor Biden and the rest would hold a Victory parade. It could take another 5 million years for the Earth to cure itself and cause a new genre of life to emerge. Like Atlantis, there would be no record of the civilisation that has just passed. Maybe caves or such megastructures that refused to melt and crumble away.

I am again worried as to why every hullabaloo was festooned on the Ukraine, prodding her to attempt a dental surgery on the Russian bear without any tinge of Anaesthesia. War and Spy movies look so good on the screens. Not in physical reality. Even on stage and casting, actors feel the strains, the heat and the exertions. It is never a Love in Tokyo. Only the pay attached to the make-believes tries to soothe and balm the twists, stretches and extremeties.

While I soak up the watery propaganda in form of Breaking news from the Western megaphones, my heart goes out to the multitude of the Ukranians drinking the gall and vinegar from the cups of the new Stalin in the Kremlin. The world has never been served so much bile from an inconvertible Nebuchadnezzar. It appears that there is nothing we can do about this.

Those who can do something are aloof, hands akimbo preaching on “harsher sanctions” whose preceeding one have proven innocuous, puerile and a timid stroll. As Ukraine crumbles and even obliterating before our eyes, let us take one lesson home.

Western assurances and protection treaties are fluidy, jaundiced and imperilled. They are not worth the papers on which they are written. Germany has found lately. You can read her body language as she walks the tight rope and balancing her soul and nationality, conscious of the outcome of 1945.

The soul of NATO has long left the body. The requiem is being sung.

Innocent Nwankwo