It has largely been forgotten by the majority of Americans that there is an ongoing conflict in Crimea. Why this is so can lead to speculation ranging from US-Russian political toadyism to just a general laissez-faire attitude towards the smaller and less worrisome countries of Eastern Europe. This, in my estimation, is probably the most realistic reason for the seemingly non-existent coverage of the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II. It just doesn’t seem like a good enough reason. So why doesn’t anyone on this side of the pond care? There has to be more to it.

James Kirchick has a piece over at National Review which discusses the history of Russian aggression during the cold war period to this point. It is a little long considering that the backbone of Russian aggression can be explained rather simply; Russian aggression is a product of a social philosophy which relies heavily on the appeal of heroic and nearly divine Slavic archetypes as a model for its political ends. When you believe yourself to be superior to all other people on your continent it becomes easy to do things such as annexing Crimea and sending armored columns into it to show the world that you mean business. Again, it is troubling that this action hasn’t garnered much interest in the United States considering the reasoning behind the action is almost a verbatim copy of the German justification of the annexing of the Sudetenland. Whenever someone argues that we have advanced to a point technologically where the overt crimes of the past can never be repeated to the same degree, I will forever refer to the Donbass and you should as well. The same air of heroic folklore hangs over the Russian psyche and compels it into different directions nearly all leading toward the same end: power. It is not nor should it be too foreign for us as Americans. We have our heroes as well and we are often apt to deify the past as a model for the present.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’thappened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet – William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

Faulkner describes the ability of the young man from the south to reach back into a past played out well before he was even a glint in his grandfather’s eye and hang onto a moment where greatness could be achieved. If you were to change the name Pickett to Nevsky and the date of July 1863 to April 1242, the sentiment of the passage would remain the same for the Russian reader. However, what would be different would be the explanation of the two people whimsically placing themselves in an ersatz heroic past as to why they were daydreaming about those particular moments. The American boy would tell you that his harkening was based on a love of home, the idea of protecting what one believes to be right and the gallantry of facing withering enemy fire and not flinching as a protest to perceived government aggression. The Russian’s explanation of their flight of whimsy would be mush easier to understand and succinct: slaughtering as many German bastards as I can with my bare hands. The Russian mindset does not feel the need to sugarcoat nor does it apologize for its rampant aggression. In fact, it prides itself on it. How would I know? My name ends in “ov”, I grew up around Russians.

This being understood, it then becomes easy to understand why Russia invaded the Donbass in flagrant defiance of their signing the Budapest Memorandum and with no fear whatsoever of NATO or the UN. First of all; why should they? England and the United States also agreed and signed the memorandum which essentially stated that after Ukraine Kazakhstan and Belarus gave up their nuclear arms these three heavy hitters would in effect protect the dignity of their borders and their sovereignty. Russia clearly had no intention of ever honoring this agreement but here is the kicker: neither did Britain nor did the US. The aim was to further establish stability in a region which was still reeling from the breakup of the Soviet Union by removing a large amount of nuclear ordinance. None of these countries ever pledged military support to Ukraine in the event of an invasion or threat to its borders because none of them were going to be too bothered if someone decided to start thumping artillery into Crimea. The Ukrainian people have only to look at the response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 from both the United States and Great Britain. Let me save you the Google search: tough talk from Bush and Miliband and a few sanctions. While the conflict only lasted a little under a week it set a dangerous precedent of a lack of gravitas in western political reactions to Russian military aggression. Russia ended up with a blueprint for what it would begin six years later in Crimea: an escalation of a local conflict under the pretense of attempting to protect ethnic Russians and pro-Russian separatists in order to control a strategically and economically important area of another country. Imagine instead of physically taking money from your neighbor you force them at gunpoint to sign over their bank accounts to you while you explain that you are merely trying to protect them from their landlord. It’s sort of like that. Pretty lousy.

The fact that no one in the United States is reporting on this regularly is mind-boggling. You could make the argument that it is because of the much vaunted conspiracy theory of US-Russia collusion on an Illuminati-type scale that is forcing the American journalistic community to stay mum but you would be wrong considering the sanctions set against Russia for the 2008 Georgian conflict were removed by Obama about an hour after he took office. You could look to the fact that Americans have plenty to worry about here at home and therefore have no interest in what happens in other countries but, call me crazy, I think that is selling the American public short. Personally, I believe the ad hoc media blackout concerning the Ukrainian situation is due to the fact that once you scratch the surface of this thing, you really start to get a whiff of something rotten. This situation proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the following:

1. The uselessness of the UN
2. The neutered existence of NATO
3. The failure of the United States to honor its pledge to an ally by a Democratic Administration
4. The indifference of a president who is accused of being a Russian puppet
5. Fear of Putin? (I’ll throw this last one in, because … why not?)

It is a shame that in America if you want to read about what is going on in a conflict that has claimed the lives of nearly three thousand civilians and wounded another nine thousand you have to search another country’s media outlets. But it is not surprising and none of this is all that complicated. Unfortunately for the people in Donbass, the reality isn’t so easily swept under the rug. Their reality is brutal, terrifying and incredibly politically relevant right now but we will hear less and less about it which will allow the casualties to mount. Our thirst for stories about porn stars and presidents leads to a collective complacency which can inadvertently extend conflicts. And that might be one of the biggest tragedies of this entire bloody mess.

J.M.