Munich Agreement 2.0

 Those who never learn from history are doomed to repeat its failings.

Donbas / Sudetenland, false flag attacks to justify military action, Western diplomats tying themselves in knots trying to avoid either giving in to bullying or all out war: 2022 or 1938?

Ironically meeting in Munich to decide what they are not going to do while pretending they are doing something.

All that is missing is the "Fat Boy" waving a bit of paper at us "Brits" as he gets off a privately run, contracted out RAF transport aircraft at Northolt air base and, with no sense of irony, talks about the maginifcent UK Armed forces and their role in supporting their European neighbours. The same Armed Forces the Tories have seriously degraded through under-funding, delays to procurement and poor choices of equipment based on cost. In 1982 the RN could put 115 armed capable hulls into action. A recent paper in the IDJ estimates the most armed capable hulls the RN can put to sea, at present is 18, this includes submarines.

The focus is all about the Ukraine, as that is the point of open conflict, who is doing what and where. Ukrainian neo-Nazi "freedom fighters" looting, raping and killing indiscriminately in raids into now Russian separist held areas of the Donbas. The indiscriminate shelling of towns and villages by the "separists" in the part of the Donbas that still sees itself as part of the Ukraine. What the world is seeing is yet another replay of Northern Ireland or the war in Bosnia, a divided people egged on by bigger international players and internal demagogues. Fighting out a problem which starts with the 1945 Yalta agreement and has never been resolved, The Cold War has never actually ended, just morphed into yet more lines in the sand which the same two main players USA and Russia draw and redraw as one or the other gains some sort of advantage while their client states rise and fall or their usefullness waxes or wains.

I have a view on what is the actual game going on. The Russians have long saught after barrier states between themsleves and the European neighbours since the Russian revolution. While the USSR dominated Eastern Europe this need was met but the inevitable happened the cost of keeping the Russian controlled barrier states became too much of a burden on the Soviet Russian State and its economy. Finland which had long held a neutral position between NATO and Russia joined NATO. Poland joins the EU and NATO, Hungary follows Poland, Russian influence in the Balkans weakens with the break up of Yugoslavia leaving them with only their traditional ally, Serbia, in the area. This was a worry to a Russian military command which still thinks in Cold War terms to defend the "Rodina". There was no real worry as a large section of the Russian border still had two buffer states in Ukraine and Belarus, that was until the Ukrainians decided their pro-Russian government had to go because the "people" looked to the EU for economic prosperity and related "freedoms".

The only major buffer state, friendly to Russia, left is Belarus. The Russians big worry is the opposition to their long standing dictator pal in Belarus is serious and the movement were very close to peacefully removing him until, with the tacit help of the Russian version of the CIA, this serious threat to Russia's border was thwarted in a crude and heavy handed way, in a signature old style "Soviet" supression of disidents and reactionaries sponsored and supported by "External Forces".

So while the world looks at the Ukraine, the reality is this is just another redrawing in the sand between the USA and Russia based on the reality Putin could use his army to crush Ukraine at any time but he will not because he is not that daft - as long as the Western States stop funding the democracy movement in Belarus and leave his pal in Belarus alone to play to Putin's Russian tune.

Belarus re-orientating to the EU and worse, NATO, is just one ex-Soviet state too many for Putin's Russia to thole.