Something must be done to stop the carnage in Ukraine

I am not a fan of 7th Congressional District Rep. Tim Walberg. He refuses to announce his “invitation only” town halls, so it is difficult to attend them. If we happen to discover and attend one of these meetings, he often expresses misrepresentations or downright lies and will not address our challenges to them. I have written about these lies and they have been documented on Twitter by Steven Meyer @TakeCareTim.

Walberg claims to be a Christian and claims to be prolife so I am astonished that he voted against providing military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. He voted against this aid after it was reported that Russian airstrikes destroyed a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

According to CNBC, the United Nations reported that as of March 9, Russian airstrikes killed an estimated 549 civilians including 41 children. But the report of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights states that “the actual figures are considerably higher … as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed.” And more Ukrainian lives are lost every day this war goes on and a desperate Vladimir Putin deliberately attacks civilians. Although Walberg claims to be pro-life, he does not seem to care about these lives taken by war. Walberg is not pro-life, only pro-birth.

The invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation, is no more a “special military operation,” as claimed by Putin, than the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was “legitimate political discourse.” But what should the United States or NATO do? If Putin is foolish enough to extend his imperialist actions against a NATO member such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, then the war will go far beyond Ukraine. According to NATO, “Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.” If NATO militarily intervenes in Ukraine, Russia will take that as an act of aggression and extend the war to NATO nations.

Also, Putin has put his nuclear force on high alert, an arsenal estimated to be 5,977 nuclear warheads, the largest in the world. The question is will he use them and risk a nuclear holocaust? Is he a madman or a rational military strategist?

As I write this column, President Joe Biden is responding with a strategy that is both firm and restrained. He wants to punish Putin without the situation getting out of control leading to World War III or worse. But the situation in Ukraine gets worse daily. Can we risk a military intervention? Will Putin use nuclear weapons against the West? I think not and agree with a series of tweets from Andrei V. Kozyrev, foreign minister of Russia from 1990-1996 and a member of the State Duma until 2000.

Kozyrev believes that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is “horrific, but not irrational” because, first, for 20 years Putin believed that Ukraine is not a real nation. Second, “The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor, you cannot report that to (Putin). So, they reported lies to him instead.” Third, “The Russian ruling elite believed its own propaganda that Pres. Biden is mentally inept. They also thought the EU was weak because of how toothless their sanctions were in 2014.” If Putin wanted to restore the Russian Empire and believed all three then it would be rational to invade Ukraine. “He miscalculated on all three, but that doesn’t make him insane. Simply wrong and immoral.”

So Kozyrev believes that Putin is rational. “Given that he is rational, I strongly believe he will not intentionally use nuclear weapons against the West.” He takes it further. “The threat of nuclear war is another example of his rationality. The Kremlin knows it can try to extract concessions, whether from Ukraine or the West, by saber-rattling its last remaining card in the deck: nuclear weapons.” Consequently, “the West should not agree to any unilateral concessions or limit its support of Ukraine too much for the fear of nuclear war.”

Perhaps NATO should take the risk and immediately enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine and send Polish jet fighters to help the Ukraine military. Something must be done to stop the carnage.

Hank Cetola, Ph.D., professor of psychology (retired), Adrian College, and founder of Lenawee Indivisible. He can be reached at lenaweeindivisible3@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Hank Cetola: Something must be done to stop the carnage in Ukraine