NHexit.com statement on Kremlin invasion of Ukraine

Shire Media
#1

Originally published at: https://freekeene.com/2022/02/25/nhexit-com-statement-on-kremlin-invasion-of-ukraine/

1) The Russian government’s act of all-out conventional war is wildly excessive. Any individual or voluntarily funded institution wishing to help defend Ukraine against this overstep is far within their rights, recent Kremlin threats against this non-withstanding.

2) The initial success of the attack on this Western-leaning nation…is a reminder that Washington cannot be relied on to defend New Hampshire. Counterintuitive as is sounds, NH would be better off – and the Western world should benefit – if we handled own defense and diplomacy. Instead of being tied the weirdly aggressive-yet-impotent D.C. zombie, we would find a wide range of better options for our security. These range from the happily de-militarized neutrality of Costa Rica to the gun-heavy but non-aligned preparedness of Switzerland. We would also have the option of doing something better for future nations-under-threat like Ukraine: We could insist that any government we ally ourselves with…free its own people from invasion-enabling gun control laws:

https://freekeene.com/2022/01/14/the-porcupine-peace-plan-how-nh-independence-could-boost-american-security-and-stop-armageddon/

3) Ukraine’s government has made this invasion practical by doing something most European governments and even American governments are still doing: They limited the private possession/carry of firearms up until the week of the invasion, when they finally let civilians carry them without permission. This is roughly what happened in the ill-fated Spanish Republic during the 1936 war. Ukrainians are now reported to be desperately mobbing gun stores, for good reason but probably too late. GunPolicy.org lists Ukraine as having only 7 civilian firearms per 100 persons…a foreign invader’s dream. Civilians in the average U.S. state, including New Hampshire, reportedly possess over 115 per 100.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine

4) Washington has unnecessarily provoked Moscow over the last 30 years. By moving NATO so close to Russian borders and arguably sponsoring a Ukrainian coup in 2014, it ignored the Rodina’s security concerns. Since 2001 especially, it has bombed, blockaded and invaded many nations with little good reason but much abuse of local civilians. It has cast away the relative ethical high ground, against the wishes of most New Hampshirites. It has also become a direct physical threat to all of us with its unconstitutional rules and raids inside our libertarian-leaning state. It has become incapable of credibly condemning Russia’s actions the way it did during the Kremlin’s invasion of Finland in 1939.

5) U.S. ruler Joe Biden’s statement of Feb. 24, 2022 is partially worthy of condemnation: “Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences.” By speaking in this manner, he equated the Russian people with their quasi-dictator…that would be like equating General Franco with the Catalan anarchists he so victimized in the Spanish Civil War. Individual Russians and the Russian nation should be treated as potential allies against Putin; many have already risked their lives this week to protest against him

6) New Hampshire, unlike Switzerland and Costa Rica, is currently on the nuclear target list as a result of its membership in the United States system. This would be one thing if the U.S. were generally in the right and generally humane. It is not and thus is not worthy of *our* lives. Both D.C. and Moscow deserve opposition; neither deserve support.

7) Moscow’s move may be designed to divert attention from a planned attack on Taiwan, where invasion-friendly gun laws are even more severe than Ukraine’s.

8) The appropriate New Hampshire move is to peaceably declare independence from the U.S. (as Rep. Sylvia’s current legislation at Concord is attempting to do). Then it should set a clean foreign policy of its own crafting. This policy should be one that does not overextend and does not aggress but does keep faith with foreign allies by insisting (as a minimum condition of continued partnership) that their governments end all the gun controls they are imposing on their people.

Dave Ridley
NHexit.com
“Independence without enmity”

1 Like
#2

I disagree with number 4. Your framing “moving NATO to so close to Russian borders” denies the interests and agency of Russia’s neighbors, who have been brutalized by the Russian empire for centuries. As we can see in this invasion, and in the support for it by most ordinary Russians, little has changed. Many pundits believe that Putin’s stated motivations (NATO, nazis, and nationalism) are not his real one, which is the threat to him personally of an independent, democratic Ukraine. Which is not to idealize Ukraine–it suffers as much from corruption as Russia–but its people are more Europe-oriented. In fact, Putin’s invasion strengthens NATO: it will expand NATO’s membership (Sweden+Finland), budget, and deployments near the Russian border. Instead of being disbanded as obsolete, NATO will continue for decades.

#3

Ya, that is a good point; Ukrainians do have the right to join an organization in that sense…the problem is that NATO has accepted too many countries and should not have accepted any on the Russian border. The problem is on NATO’s end for over-expanding, or maybe for even continuing to exist after the Warsaw Pact fell. Imagine how you’d feel if China made an alliance with Mexico and most of the other nations in this hemisphere.

#4

Imagine how you’d feel if China made an alliance with Mexico and most of the other nations in this hemisphere.

I’d first look in the mirror and ask if the US were giving Mexico and other nations significant cause to fear us. Feelz are irrelevant. I couldn’t blame countries under demonstrated historical and continuing threat from seeking allies. But let’s say a China-Latin America alliance were aggressive: Really, does a continent-spanning nuclear power need to fear invasion by neighbors? As the world’s biggest nation, Russia has as much land to form a buffer as it wants–in WWII it moved industry to the Ural mountains. Really, does Russia need to fear invasion by sclerotic Europe, which already has let itself become dependent on Russian oil? Again, Russia’s invasion has strengthened NATO, dramatically. NATO was not the underlying motivation.

#5

And you could also make the point, which I guess you did, that a Russia surrounded by NATO would still have the world’s support if NATO invaded in a relatively unprovoked manner , the way it had much of the world’s support in 1941. But it’s never bad to empathize a bit with their paranoia…how many times has a powerful western europe nation or coalition invaded them in a massive unjustified war since 1800… 3 times? 4 times? Plus the Intervention and the Russo-Japanese war. This is stuff that happened INSIDE Russia or its empire in each case. You can see why they might be fixated on a perceived need for buffer states. What was it Churchill once said… something like “only in historical context can their worries be pardoned and their excesses understood.” He was talking about the Ulstermen, but similar principle.

“By the location of their grievance shall ye know them.”

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#6

“We should empathize, but not so much that our hearts fall out.”

#7

we need to #NHexit from NATO

#8

That’s what ron paul thinks… that nato is a noose around our necks. The estonian govt call for a no fly zone (the insane nuclear war precursor) is starting to turn me against NATO too. They have committed a lot fewer abuses historically than the U.S. … but in a sense they sort of ARE the U.S.

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