Rape as a weapon and spoils of war and relation to ethnic cleansing.

Updated 6/12/2024  UN says both Hamas and Israel committed war crimes; warrants had been issued by the International Criminal Court for leaders of both sides

  https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-says-it-creates-broad-prospects-ceasefire-deal-gaza-2024-06-12/

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/how-depraved-humanity-can-be-gaza-may.html

Updated 4 15 2024    Peter Haass, a journalist who has covered genocide in Bosnia and sees something very similar happening in Gaza, provides a very sobering opinion piece in the Washington Post.  If you have access to the Washington Post, read it. I am not the only one to see what the Israel/Gaza conflict has in common with Bosnia, with which I am personally familiar.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/09/israel-gaza-war-crimes-genocide/

 In this December  2023 blog post, I look at it from both the October 7 Hamas atrocities and the Israeli response.   Hamas has as its goal genocide and wiping out Jews in Israel.  In response, Israel's carpet bombing and later restriction of humanitarian aid and food, leading to famine for survivors and the horrific death of thousands of children and noncombatants, make them liable for charges of genocide as well. Israel's actions are far more intentional than claiming the death of civilians is not just collateral damage.  It appears that it is to destroy the lives of both civilians and Hamas fighters in Gaza.  What they have done in restricting humanitarian aid cannot be rationalized as "collateral damage", but additional evidence of their intent to kill as many Gazans as they can.  Both Hamas and Israel should be the subject of international court actions for years in the future for their crimes against humanity.  

Updated 1/26/2024  Top U.N. court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, but not to cease fire (msn.com) 

Update January 14, 2024  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/south-africa-accuses-israel-of-genocide-and-urges-top-un-court-to-halt-gaza-war/ar-AA1mOAaU?ocid=socialshare

Home | INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE (icj-cij.org)

This is an update of an earlier post on the Israel-Hamas war. It reflects what reports and punditry of what I have been hearing and close-hand experiences with ethnic cleansing conflict and my experience with international courts concerning my intense focus and observations of international court proceedings in the wars of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.(a subject of personal experiences and views in this blog and many published columns)

The Hague ruled today when South Africa filed a complaint with the International Court This is an update of an earlier post on the Israel-Hamas war. The Hague checked in when South Africa filed a complaint with the International Court that Israel was conducting ethnic cleansing by killing so many civilians in Gaza. The court replied quickly and they did not rule to stop Israel from waging the war, but gave a series of guidelines of protecting civilian lives.. As of today, there is more talk that negotiations are still moving along to provide a month or more of cease-fire to get aid to the devastated and suffering Palestinians trapped in Gaza with the goal of liberating the estimated 130 surviving hostages. It appears to those not in Israel is the question rests now on Netanyahu and does he really cares enough to truly make hostage release a priority and the amount of pressure from within Israel and the voters to see it is in his political interest to do so. Biden and his diplomats have been negotiating with this goal, using hostage release in mind. The Hague judgment gives Israel cover to continue to keep up the fighting yet while reducing civilian casualties. Hamas is also loathe to release hostages because they are their human shields and their best bargaining chip to achieve a cease-fire. It is a horrible situation because the victims, the Palestinians, are the ones suffering..that Israel was conducting ethnic cleansing by killing so many civilians in Gaza. The court replied quickly, and they did not rule to stop Israel from waging the war but gave a series of guidelines for protecting civilian lives. needed to avoid being guilty of crimes against humanity.

As of today, there is more talk that negotiations are still moving along to provide a month or more of cease-fire to get aid to the devastated and suffering Palestinians trapped in Gaza with the goal of liberating the estimated 130 surviving hostages. It appears to those not in Israel that the question rests now on Netanyahu and whether he really cares enough to truly make hostage release a priority. It is in his political interest to do so to make no deal. The US is in a dilemma of how to deal with a stubborn Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet, who have opposed and still oppose the Biden goal of the two-state solution and oppose pauses to allow the humanitarian aid to reach the civilians. Biden believes he cannot dictate Israeil's internal politics, and others say he should not continue funding Israel's war efforts. Nothing will change until the Israeli government leadership changes, and that will only happen in elections are held because Netanyahu also has personal reasons not to resign, opening him up to continuing criminal prosecution on corruption charges. Biden and his diplomats have been negotiating with this goal, using hostage release nonetheless, as a quiet way of encouraging internal Israeli forces in opposition to Netanyahu.

The Hague judgment gives Israel cover to continue to keep up the fighting, yet they give directions to reducing civilian casualties. An observer of the toothless court was to give Israel a yellow card as in a soccer violation and to move the issue to the UN Security Council where the US has a veto. The charges of Israel's criminal actions against humanity through international tribunals will continue. Hamas is also loathe to release hostages because they are their human shields and their best bargaining chip to achieve a cease-fire. It is a horrible situation because the victims, the Palestinians, are the ones suffering..

Whether Israel is found guilty of genocide or not depends on findings like all crimes that there was intent to commit it.. Were the Gaza civilian casualties collateral damage as two brutal forces fought it out, or did Israel's callousness signify an intent to wipe out Palestinians as a group? That is going to take years of investigation and testimony to resolve.. What surprises me is that Israel has not charged Hamas in the Hague with an intent to wipe out Israel beginning on October 7. The genocide of Jews is the Hamas printed charters. Their intent is no secret and easy to prove. My guess is the death toll of Palestinians caused by Israel's indiscriminate bombing is far in excess of those Israelis killed so brutally by Hama terrorists on Oct.7. All of this is legalistic back and forth, and in the meantime, the suffering of humanity continues.

Continuing with the original posting:

I have refrained from jumping on stories presented from either side in this awful conflict because I am so appalled and horrified by the death and destruction of so many women and, children, and non-combatants. I am also conditioned enough to take many reports that could be used and inflated as wartime propaganda. While rape has a long history as a war weapon, and it seems particularly brutal in wars between ethnic and religious combatants, the horror of the issue arises again.  Defiling women's bodies seems like an intentional and extra hateful act in conflicts fueled by hate..  It appears there are videos as evidence of rape and utilization of women by Hamas on October 7, and I take the body count of 15,000 in Gaza as believable, just looking at the physical damage reported in our media. Their bodies tell their stories. They’re not alive to speak for themselves. (nbcnews.com) What stories like this mean is that the international court in the Hague will be jammed with war crimes cases, with both sides being defendants. So long as the leadership on both sides remains the same,  I see no hope, even for the two-state solution I support. I am dismayed. how many children civilians killed so far in gaza - Google Search

For differences between war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide go to:

 https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Countries/CD/FS-2_Crimes_Final.pdf.

 Listen up, young people.  Before demonstrating on behalf of one side or the other, your ire needs to be directed toward ethnic hatred by anyone. My reaction is more than just a plague on both of your houses, and it is clear the conflict was intentionally begun by Hamas on October 7. Other facts are emerging Mistakes in judgment, an ideologically driven incompetence of Israel by a controversial president who was off on West Bank right-wing tangent, overreacted, in spite of warnings against doing that by the US, with inhumane carpet bombing of civilians as if killing many might get a few perpetrators of the attack killed, too., though they were safe in tunnels. The attacker bent on the ethnic cleansing of all Jews in their sworn mantra, and pledges also make this more than just a plague on both houses. A leader who appears to care little about hostages and whose settlement policy stoked more hatred is likewise worthy of condemnation. There has been a handwringing that October 7 was the first time rape was used as a weapon. Rape has always been the hallmark of barbaric invaders, or the spoils of war have often been gifted to their foot soldiers, permitting their perverse minds to carry out their sick fantasies. After World War II in Berlin, rape of surviving women by Soviet soldiers was well known.  (. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany) My husband as a 12-year-old in Yugoslavia, saw mutilated men dead in the streets, then, too. Nazi ovens were a fact. I am old enough to have met survivors in person. In recent times, in the 1990s in Europe in Bosnia, the same outcry about the Bosnian Serb technique of using rape as a weapon of a war of ethnic hatred was heard and was widely reported. "Estimates of the number of women and girls raped range from 12,000 to 50,000, the vast majority of whom were Bosniaks raped by Bosnian Serbs. The ICTY estimates between 20,000 and 50,000 rapes and that 80% of those happened over a prolonged period of imprisonment. UNHCR experts have claimed 12,000 rapes. (Rape during the Bosnian War - Wikipedia)"

 It is. an age-old technique to scare those they hated into flight, clearing out an area they had as a goal to conquer. In the Bosnian conflict, Bosnian Serbs marched into a killing field of every male in the town of Srebrenica. Over 7000 were executed and plowed under in a mass grave for one reason: their religion. They were Muslim. The masterminds of this, if still alive, are sitting in prison for their crimes due to the Hague prosecutions. https://www.britannica.com/event/Srebrenica-massacre

BRITANNICA.COM

Srebrenica massacre | Facts, History, Map, & Photos

Srebrenica massacre | Facts, History, Map, & Photos

Both side-ism cannot ignore crimes against humanity. Updated 11/11/2024

Update: ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel, Hamas leadership: what happens next? | UN News  11/11/204

Bravo, Pres. Biden: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/20/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-unites-states-response-to-hamass-terrorist-attacks-against-israel-and-russias-ongoing-brutal-war-against-ukraine/

 MSNBC received criticism from one of my favorite organizations, the ADL, for daring to report the civilian casualties in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. I also have other favorite organizations supporting human and civil rights.  I have seen the impact of war on civilians in years of personal observations from post-war Berlin to the ethnic cleansing conflicts in  Bosnia.  The losers in such barbaric violence are always the civilians on both sides. Tragedy is visited on those who are not combatants, regardless of who they support in violent conflicts. 

The only accountability since World War II has been the Hague tribunals and the Nuremberg trials, which prosecute crimes against humanity, the suffering and slaying of civilians motivated by hatred, or used as a strategy of terrorists and sick-minded dictators and ideologues. Otherwise, it is the horror of " might make right" that has characterized the evil qualities of the human race from its beginning and eclipses the care and concern side of humanity.  It is that streak of evil that, at this moment, is raising its ugly head once more.  

  As news unfolded of the barbarianism of the Hamas terrorists,  what is clear the more we learn, the more horrified we become of the evil (so correctly tagged by Biden) we are witnessing.  It is also clear that Israel right now has the moral highroad by not acting like barbarians, too, in their justified plans to focus their defense and punishment on Hamas, and not target the civilian population. There must be some safe zone to which Palestinian women and children can flee. This may be the role Egypt can and must play.   

  This is not meant to ignore the fact that Palestinians in Gaza had supported the Hamas leadership, but now their women and children are victims of Hamas, too, since they are already casualties.   It also may be instructive to the West Bank Palestinians that taking up arms against Israel could have devastating unintended consequences blowing back on their own. Hezbollah is the real additional threat and it could be one reason the US carrier fleet has been situated just off Lebanon to back up the implied threat to Hezbollah by Biden to stay out and don't even try to attack Israel from the north.

The approach of some is that any reporting of the suffering of Palestinians in the conflict is all propaganda and should not be reported needs a pinch of reality.  Also cries to show both sides on campus discussion to prohibit the Palestinian viewpoint flies in the face of free speech. The Hamas barbarians and the reporting of the atrocities present the best opportunity for supporters of the ADL and Israel to convince the world that, indeed, Hamas is evil, and they need to keep making an easy case there there are no false equivalencies. Israel has a huge megaphone now.    At the same time, being factual and reporting verified evidence, careful screening by mainstream media is critical. We should not rely solely on fringe media, social media, single point of ideology cable channels for facts. The more points of view you can get, even learning speculation and theory is a worthwhile practice. Taking assertions by either warring party needs to be taken with a healthy skepticism that demands verification or at least exposure of the source.The value of free speech on campuses and in media. It is key to a democracy and disappears in an autocracy.

These comments regarding free speech have been posted in a stand alone posting 10/14/23 MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: The value of free speech to a democracy; it disappears in an autocracy

 

In some quarters of the left, what aboutism also is a controversial, viewpoint...What Hamas did to Israel is not as bad as what Israel has done to Palestinians, for example, so Hamas' atrocities are justified.  The moral issue is artrocities committed against innocents is never acceptable..  From the very left is a voice for moral judgment in response which is: 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/13/hamas-no-moral-justification-william-barber

The left faces a reckoning as Israel divides Democrats (nbcnews.com)

To maintain their moral clarity and high ground in the face of the evil of Hamas, the US has asked Israel to abide by the rule of war, AKA Geneva Conventions and amendments, in their counterattack on Gaza. What are they? FAQs: Frequently asked questions on the rules of war | ICRC

Why is being on the side of morality?  Not always, but usually, that translates into allies providing political, monetary, and military support to the obvious victim, soon after the atrocities by the attacker are revealed to the public.  Memories are short and eventually, support can diminish because of political and ideological pressures.  Keeping up the initial enthusiasm for support becomes more difficult as time goes on, and the counter-offensive drags on or loses its moral and political support,. Support of Ukraine is facing those headwinds now.

Send in the danged Migs

 Here's how the Russians see Putin's war in Ukraine... It is a proxy war against NATO . It also demonstrates why Putin sees destroying Donbas and its people as crucial to Putin's power. I support those who say send Zelensky everything we can for the defense of attack now, asap...including the danged Polish Migs. The future of our own security interests and world peace and the future of democracy in the free world are at stake..https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-foreign-minister...

We have had experience with countries supporting war crimes before: it was in the Balkans, 19901-1995 in Bosna. and in Kosovo, The Serbian president Milosovic was voted out of office and died awaiting trial in the Hague, but his lieutenants are in jail. A few years after the conflicts, a group of Serbian students spoke to a gathering at Denver's 9 News. I walked away with the impression that they voted out Milosovic and turned him over to the Hague, not because of the atrocities he oversaw, but because he lost the promise to make Serbia greater again. He was a loser. Putin may have the support of the Russian people now, but if he loses Ukraine, he may lose power as well.

What was Srebrenica, and why is it relevant to Ukraine updated

Update April 10, 2022: War in Ukraine: Gordon Brown backs Nuremberg-style trial for Putin - BBC News     

Continuing with original post:

Ukraine President Zelenski called the massacre of civilians in Bucha genocide and Biden accused the Russians of war crimes.  There are often references to Srebrenica in comments from officials and pundits to it in reminding us of the most recent experiences in post-World War II with the horrific ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, 1991-1995.  The turning point in US and Europe getting more involved to stop the slaughter was an incident in a town in Bosnia where every male was marched out of town by Serbians, gunned down, and buried in a mass grave for one reason: they were Muslim.  The resulting international tribunals resulted in the Bosnian Serb leader being found guilty and imprisoned.  Eventually, Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Bosnia's neighbor, Serbia, was voted out of office and turned over to the tribunal in the Hague. He died of natural causes while awaiting trial in prison. Milosevic was accused of being the inspiration and mastermind of the bloody attempt to incorporate northern Bosnia into greater Serbia and to rid the region of Muslims, there since the Ottoman takeover in the 15th century. Bucha may be Ukraine's Srebrenica. I wrote the following column published in the local Grand County newspaper, the Sky Hi News in July 2015. Bosnia today is the poorest country in Europe, with the Bosnian Serbs threatening to instigate another civil war to deal with their unfinished business and suspected to  take inspiration from Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

This March's rallies in the Serbian capitol of Belgrade  supported Putin's aggression. .  While Bosnia does not border Russia, the parallels are still frightening.  Bosnia is more or less under control of the EU which still has peacekeepers there. In light of the Ukraine conflict, the EU doubled their peacekeeper military there and the French fighter jets are doing flyovers to remind the Bosnian Serbs to cool it. The fate of Putin could also resemble Milosevic's, He has been  warned. The international tribunal and the UN have many on the ground in Ukraine documenting Russian atrocities and those responsible with a view for future Hague or UN related trials.

The original 2015 column and an explainer of Srebrenica: Imagine if every  male, man and boy, in Grand County were assembled, hands tied behind their backs, marched to a killing field, and shot dead for one reason: they were all of the same religion, an identified ethnic group, hated by a superior force.

  Something like  that took place twenty years ago in a city with a population a little larger than our county.  You say that must have happened in Africa, maybe Rwanda? It is difficult to believe that such a horrendous event  also took place in an industrialized European country, especially since the Western world had hopefully  learned its lesson from the Holocaust. 

The world is just now coming to grips with its failure to stop the worst genocide  in Europe since World War II. July 11 in   Bosnia, former President Bill Clinton and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright,   prime ministers, presidents, a queen,  from Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Turkey, Serbia, and Jordan ( Angela Merkel of Germany paid her respects earlier), marked the twentieth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, occurring  in a conflict which gave birth to  the term “ethnic cleansing”.

 On July 11, 1995, 8,372 men and boys were  marched to the countryside, shot to death, and  their executioners attempted to cover up the slaughter by moving the bodies, scattering body parts, and burying them so that no one would know.  A few of the victims played dead or hid under other bodies to escape and testify  to the world.    Thanks to DNA and forensic  recovery of the remains, all but 1000 have been identified, and another 136 coffins with parts of identified victims, were buried in the memorial ceremonies Saturday.

Oh, you say,  the Muslims did it?  (In Bosnia at that time, the largest ethnic group was Muslims).  Wrong.  The killers were Bosnian Serbs , Christian Orthodox, and the victims were killed for one reason. They were Muslim.

 It was a bloody incident in a bloody war as the former Yugoslavia broke apart in 1991 and the province of Bosnia struggled to gain its independence, with ethnic Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslims engaged in a civil war to determine governance. Bosnia’s population was a little more than Colorado’s. Over 100,000, mostly Muslims, died   before Srebrenica and  in smaller incidents of ethnic cleansing. The United Nations had already intervened and had established Srebrenica as a safe haven, but some Dutch peacekeepers were held hostage and courts later ruled  the Netherlands liable for their failure to protect those in a safe haven.

News of the massacre resulted in the following month with  NATO retaliatory air strikes against Bosnian Serbs  The Dayton Accord three months later   ended the Bosnia conflict, thanks mostly to the belated leadership of the US.  Joined in a federation with a Croatian/Muslim entity, Bosnia Serbs gained autonomy.   War crimes trials of Bosnian Serbs accused of responsibility for Srebrenica are still taking place in The Hague.

 The US last week introduced a resolution in the UN to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide,  but Russia, to its shame, yet  historically allied with Serbia,   vetoed it.  Showing more grace, the prime minister of Serbia attended the commemoration ceremonies and endured rocks   thrown at him by impassioned activists.

Post note: The Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was found guilty in the Hague in 2016  and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Felicia Muftic is a columnist with the Sky Hi News, Grand County, Colorado

.

 Highly recommended:http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/11/europe/bosnia-srebrenica-massacre-commemoration/ and listen to the audio version.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/world/europe/srebrenica-genocide-massacre.html?_r=1

Did Putin miscalculate? updated Feb. 21. April 7, May 8, 2022

Update April 7, 2022, May 8, 2022: Within a few days after the Feb.21 update, Russia invaded.  It was clear Putin had miscalculated, but so had the rest of the world. The common wisdom was that Putin's army would be in Kiev and 'Zelenski would have been taken out in three days.  The Feb. 21 column below missed an important element, the leadership of Zelenski who refused to be evacuated as Russian troops advanced into Ukraine and told the US offer, don't send me transportation, send me weapons. Further rallies were from the Snake Island defenders, who told the Russian warship to go f ...yourself...an icon that became a battle cry of defiance.  /The rest is playing out before our eyes on  television.Russia’s Grave Miscalculation: Ukrainians Would Collaborate - The New York Times (nytimes.com.  We all, Putin included, underestimated the strength of the human spirit to resist tyranny.   

Update February 21, 2022 continues. This may have been Putin's epic miscalculation. Over 50 percent of Ukrainians oppose Putin's invasion...and most of those would take up armed opposition or civil demonstrations. Ukrainians were supposed to put their ethnic ties with Russia above national identity and desire to be in the western economic and democratic orbit. In fact, there was a bloodless coup that resulted in the pro-Russian president fleeing to Moscow. and a democratic election of a new president. Putin may have expected Ukrainians would quietly accept a Russian quisling government and Russian troop occupation. Putin was only half right. His problem is where he is half wrong. The opposition was going to be deadly and drawn out as the outgunned Ukrainian military planned to fade into the population and undertake urban guerilla warfare. They have been trained and weaponized for that by the West. In effect, there was going to be a bloody civil war. The question is whether the Russian public has much stomach for that, believing Ukrainians were close ethnic cousins. This is why there is speculation Putin planned to cook up Ukrainian aggression against Russians within and outside Ukraine as an excuse to give Russians a justification and why the body bag count of dead Russian soldiers could damage Putin's political grip in Russia itself. With 100,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian borders, that Ukraine would attack Russians is a very unbelievable story. The US landing tons of small arms weapons and ammunition for use by pro-western Ukrainians is part of the credible threat that body bags filled with Russian soldiers would be sent back to Russia is a real threat to Putin and as a rational actor, he may be taking into account and his calculation in the timing. It takes time for the effects to be felt and perhaps he thinks he can beat down opposition and consolidate power before his own populace feel the blowback. . The Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan once the maimed and dead soldiers were in critical numbers to overcome their government propaganda to any contrary. That Putin cares about sanctions, no matter how extreme, is doubtful and it would take some time before Russian consumers would feel the pinch. Those massive refugees would result in the Russian invasion is also a slow developing anti-Russian propaganda impact. He may save face by a smaller incursion where the population is more to his liking, formalizing his prior stealth take over Donbas and breaking it from the rest of Ukraine and getting a better land bridge to Crimea. We will see. with a few weeks while frozen ground can give tanks traction. Update Feb. 21: https://www.vox.com/2022/2/21/22944995/russia-vladimir-putin-orders-troops-ukraine-east-donbas /The response from the West will determine whether he gets away with that without triggering massive sanctions and succeeds in taking the whole enchilada.

The original February 7, 2022 posting continues: There is speculation that Putin may have been influenced by the USA's messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, thinking that the America was so weak and lacked resolve or desiring isolationism, that it would not get heavily involved in a Russian military invasion of Ukraine. This is the danger of MAGA. It makes the US look weaker, not greater. We do not know what is in Putin's head, but if he thought the isolationist had won in the US, as evidenced by the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, the weak response to Russia's military grabs in Georgia, Syria and Crimea, he miscalculated. If Putin pays little for marching into Ukraine and the west does not inflict pain on him for doing so, others will take that as a green light and try it elsewhere such as China with its designs on Taiwan. Serbia and Bosnian Serbs still have hopes the northern half of Bosnia (ethnic cleansed of Muslims and Croatian Catholics in the 1990's civil war) would become part of Greater Serbia and are watching for the intensity of western response to Russia's actions in Ukraine. The MAGA movement period is similar to the America First and isolationist era in the 1930s. The pro-fascist movement in the US gained steam and adherents in spite of FDR's disposition to the contrary. Before TV and and the internet, America had radio and fascist, isolationist media personalities like Father Coughlin, with a large radio following and an anti-Semitic demagogue supporting German fascism. . The 1938–39 deplatforming of Father Coughlin. (slate.com)The Father Coughlin of our era is FOX news and Tucker Carlson. Carlson's spiel is not anti-Semitism, but an admirer of autocracy instead of democracy and an apologist of Putin's rule and expansionism. He ignores the anti-Semitism that tinges these autocrats, especially Viktor Orban of Hungary.. Tucker Carlson Says Ukraine Isn’t Important. These Key GOP Voters Beg to Differ. - POLITICO. Tucker Carlson, Hungary, and the right’s embrace of authoritarianism - Vox   Hitler, maybe have thought, thought the US would be content to remain in Fortress America. Before Pearl Harbor, America stood by while Czechoslovakia's ethnic German Sudetenland province was handed over to Germany, (to get Peace in our Time0, Poland was invaded, Anschluss with Austria was finalized, France and Norway fell to the Germans, Britain was pulverized in the Blitz and the US was asleep at the wheel until December 7th, 1941. One wonders what kind of a country we would have been had not Pearl Harbor happened. It gave FDR the political winds in his back to fight a two-front war as the American public realized that isolationism did not work with airplanes as the new weapon in the sky. The world in 2022 is even more intertwined by trade, alliances, and technology, cyber vulnerability, and nuclear weapons with intercontinental reach than it was then.

These kinds of conflicts do not end well. This reminds me of the horrific Bosnian war of ethnic cleansing in the first half of the-1990s and the death of 100,000 civilians.. Until now, this was the only hot war in Europe since World War II. The Serbs lost their attempt to expand the boundaries to encompass all of their ethnic kinfolks and their president died in the Hague awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. The result is that the current population of Bosn1a, once similar to Colorado's, has decreased from 5 million in 1991, the beginning of the conflict, to 3 million, resulted in massive emigration, is the poorest per capita economy in Europe, still subject to ethnic strife and threatened with renewed violence and break up. My fear is that Ukrainians would devolve into this tragedy. The size of the impact dwarfs the Bosnia conflict. The population of Ukraine is 44 million. and the threat extends to all former Russian satellites bordering it

My interest in this is personal. I also fear for any number of my relatives by blood and marriage and good friends with similar ties in Poland, the Baltics, and the Balkans though less so Hungary and Austria, who have maintained cordial relations with Russia. Even friends with relatives in Germany are nervous about a Russian invasion in their neighborhood. All of them are targets of Putin's desire to reassemble the old Soviet Union boundaries and spheres of influence. They have enjoyed the peace and more prosperity after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I have often written about eastern Europe in this blog, drawing on over 50 years of being married to a remarkable person from the Balkans, studying in post-war Berlin, in seminars on eastern Europe in college, and spending a measurable part of my life there on family visits. My particular interest is Bosna, with close relatives by marriage there, a fascination with its history of cultural conflicts beginning my first visit in 1959. In 2020 I completed a six-year project of humanitarian aid through Rotary, writing, and championing three grants there that brought me physically there and close friendships. Our family business is the importation and distribution of cosmetics to the US from Croatia.

My views of Russia are not frozen in the cold war any more than are Putin's He was the last KGB station chief in Dresden, as the wall came down. Those former satellites have enjoyed peace and increasing prosperity with their alignment with the west since then. They have understood and cherished the freedom of political expression and economic advantages of a freer market society. Putin has replaced Marxist-Leninist doctrine with oligarch capitalism and hyper-nationalism. His methods of governance however are similar to the old USSR, punishing those who challenge his accumulation of wealth, power, and loyalty to him with more finesse and secrecy than the show trials of old. Poison, imprisonment, mysterious assassinations of dissidents are his tools. The breakup of the old Soviet Union he believes was a tragedy and the reassembly of that empire is his stated goal. So far he has been successful in Georgia, Syria, and Crimea. Putin is apparently planning to go "full Stalinist" if he takes over Ukraine by military force. This would be right out of Putin's KGB playbook: "The U.S. has warned the United Nations that it believes Russia has plans to kill large numbers of critics, dissidents and "vulnerable populations" in Ukraine" https://news.yahoo.com/russia-plans-target-dissidents-ukraine-060948378.htm

https://news.yahoo.com/russia-lists-ukrainians-killed-sent-055416138.html "Washington has warned the UN rights chief that Russia has lists of Ukrainians "to be killed or sent to camps" in the event of an invasion, according to a letter... "     If  US intelligence agencies know about this list, hopefully they know who is on it and is warning them.   

It is assumed both Russia and the West have more accurate polling, but here is what is public:Poll: Over half of Ukrainians will actively resist Russian invasion (kyivindependent.com) /The pollster is the CNN like news network of India, which does not have a stake in the outcome of any Russian invasion of Ukraine)Every third Ukrainian ready to put up armed resistance to Russians: Study, World News | wionews.com

Biden's quiet, muscular diplomacy: A new foreign policy sheriff in town

 One autocrat got the message. There is a new foreign policy sheriff in town. Erdogan's Turkey is a member of NATO that bought missiles from another autocratic regime. Russia, an adversary and cyber attacker of the US. Biden was not pleased and still is not completely pleased as Turkey returns the experts Russia sent with their missiles, but not the missiles. More to come. Putin massed his military at the Ukraine border, implying a threatened invasion and testing Biden's intent to resist. Biden and NATO reaffirmed their commitment to defend Ukraine's embryonic democracy on the border with other NATO members. Quietly, Putin withdrew his troops after a telephone conversation with Biden. . Next, there were threats by Russia to move their influence into the Balkans through Serbia. Slovenia proposed eliminating the autonomy of Bosnia and dividing it up. That was a concept the US slapped down. That has been met as well by calls to fast-track membership of countries there not already members of NATO, including Bosnia. Most in the Balkans already are NATO members, including Montenegro with its best submarine port in the Mediterranean. The Balkans are still a work in progress. Biden is no fool, nor is he ignorant, having served both as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years and as vice-president. He will be meeting with both Turkey and Putin this summer. That should be interesting and maybe tense. This is a significant change from the Trump era, whose foreign policy was bootlicking and praising nuclear powers governed by autocrats, mostly adversaries of the US. The technique resembled appeasement, and the autocrats were emboldened to expand and rearm further from Russia to Iran to North Korea. His ending treaties designed to restrain China's expansion into the southeastern Pacific, and Iran's military nuclear ambitions backfired. Both China and Iran took advantage of the opportunity Trump's foreign policy gave them to expand economic and military interests into sensitive areas..of the South China Sea and Hamas and nuclear re-armament in the mid-east. Since Trump backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, it has increased its enriched uranium stockpiles. It has, however, agreed to international inspections fearing more international backlash and economic sanctions. Trump was a fool who thought flattery got him somewhere because he craved flattery himself. In foreign policy, that tomfoolery may have kept the guns from firing. Yet, it gave our adversaries a chance and breathing space to creep into our national interests and fill the void left by Trump's isolationist policies. In foreign policy, brute power and economic self-interest count above anything else.

If I have any bone to pick, it would be Biden turning over Afghanistan to the Taliban as he pulled out our skeleton force there. Whether Afghanistan will be a terrorist threat in the future to the US remains to be seen. However, the damage it will do to the rights of women there is going to be heartbreaking. The US has spent the past 20 years empowering and educating girls and women, and they will be the Taliban's first victims.

MSN.COM

Turkey to Send Russian Missile Experts Home in Signal to Biden
Russia Announces Withdrawal of Troops From Ukraine Border | World Report | US NewsNATO - Topic: Relations with Ukraine
Biden proposes summit with Putin as Russia amasses on Ukraine border (cnbc.com)

US commander warns NATO is ready to respond to aggression (defensenews.com)Russia's strategic interests and tools of influence in the Western Balkans - Atlantic Council


US rejects Slovenia-linked plan to break up Bosnia (euobserver.com)
Why Biden Should Fast-Track Bosnia's NATO Accession | RUSI | Official Press Release (wired-gov.net)
Balkans rocked as leaked memo explores redrawing Bosnia’s borders along ethnic lines | Euronews
Biden Seeks U.S.-China Defense Hotline (foreignpolicy.com)
US going to hold China 'accountable' in the region; press Beijing to follow rules: Biden - The Economic TimesThe big trade move America got wrong (yahoo.com)

Iran Extends Nuclear Program Inspections Agreement - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Iran's help has boosted Hamas rocket force, posing Israel a dilemma - CSMonitor.com