Problems of American Democracy - Part 2
by John Lawrence
How is Roe vs Wade like the Iran nuclear deal? They both can be overturned by a new President, Supreme Court or Congress. There is no such thing as "settled law." Another example: the Paris climate change agreement which Obama signed on to and Trump pulled out of. A nation that can't keep its agreements either internally or externally is a nation with no direction, a nation not so much making progress as going over and over again the same ground. We go back and forth and round and round while other countries go forward in the same direction.This whole process is more crucial due to the fact that 1) other countries are losing trust in us if they can't count on us to keep our word and 2) if we're not all on the same page regarding climate change, the earth will be a goner in just a few years. Some countries are already experiencing disasters that they are ill prepared to deal with.
Some of the issues are pretty straightforward. Instead of the US getting its panties all in a wad over Ukraine, the situation there is mainly of concern to Russia since Ukraine is right on Russia's border, and, by the way, used to be part of Russia. Would the US tolerate a hostile government in Mexico? Let Russia deal with it. It should be none of our business. Reagan promised Gorbachev that NATO would not start absorbing countries further to the east. Now that's just what NATO is doing with its cultivation of Ukraine for admission to NATO. The National Interest reports:
"Indeed, Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin have complained bitterly about the expansion of NATO towards their borders despite what they had believed were assurances to the contrary. “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?” Putin said at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007.“No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”
"As the newly declassified documents show, the Russians might have had a point. While it was previously understood that Secretary of State James Baker’s assurance to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “not one inch eastward” during a February 9, 1990, meeting was only in the context of German reunification, the new documents show that this was not the case.
"Gorbachev only accepted German reunification—over which the Soviet Union had a legal right to veto under treaty—because he received assurances that NATO would not expand after he withdrew his forces from Eastern Europe from James Baker, President George H.W. Bush, West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the CIA Director Robert Gates, French President Francois Mitterrand, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British foreign minister Douglas Hurd, British Prime Minister John Major, and NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner."
Obviously, Russia is very concerned about Ukraine becoming part of NATO with the prospects of advanced weapons being placed on its border. So why make a big deal over whether or not Ukraine or part of Ukraine is taken over by Russia? The US has long considered itself to have hegemony over North and South America and has overthrown governments in South and Central America. Let Russia have some degree of hegemony in its corner of the world. There are more important issues which require the cooperation of the whole world - climate change and pandemics to name two.
