Russia — Blog — Healy Chen

Catch me if you can

When America violates the sovereignty of another country, that’s perfectly fine! Essentially kidnapping a foreign President in their home soil; why wouldn’t other nations do just that? The People’s Liberation Army special forces should airdrop into Taipei, no problems! When you are famous like the United States, they just let you do it. Grab them by the Maduro.

There’s precedent to this sovereignty violation thing. Many years ago, American Seal Team Six flew into Pakistan in the zero dark of night to kill Osama bin Laden. The international community said nothing about that, because we can all point to Osama as say, “Yup, that’s a bad guy.”

So this isn’t about President Trump - Osama was under President Obama. It’s about America flexing its muscle and daring dissenting nations to do anything about it. Russia invaded Ukraine because it can. The only thing the rest of the world has done is protest loudly at the United Nations. When the deterrent is effectively zero, the bully shall reign until it gets punched in the face.

Nor is this commentary on whether or not Maduro has done terrible things. If the nations of this globe cannot respect each other’s borders and sovereign rights absolutely, then what the heck are we doing? It’s all a shell game because there’s a tacit understanding on who’s got real power (read: nukes) and influence to impose their will internationally. A country’s extradition laws is only as solid as its ability to defend itself against the offending nation.

Though I guess Pakistan’s nukes didn’t deter a DEVGRU team from jumping in unannounced. I guess it would be rather difficult to defend harboring bin Laden of all people.

Can Americans at least get cheaper gasoline prices out of this embarrassment?

Life in peace

Man did I pick a good year to delete the twitter app off my phone. I could have easily spent hours death-scrolling through the timeline when Russian invaded Ukraine last week. Not to say I don’t care about the well-being of Ukrainians. But checking up on the the minute-to-minute news is just not a productive use of time. What the heck can I do anyways? The happenings of the other side of the globe is something I have zero control over.

"Imagine all the people living life in peace."

It is interesting to see NATO refusing to intervene militarily on Ukraine’s behalf. Simply because Russia is a nuclear power. No one wants to risk an escalation towards nuclear war - for very good reason (San Francisco is often a nuclear target in movies). But that means if you’re a nation with nukes, you can invade another country with somewhat impunity. The United States knows this well, of course. We went into Iraq with nobody’s permission. Seal Team Six went into Pakistan to kill Osama Bin-Ladin clandestinely.

What NATO and rest of the world can do in response is to levy huge economic and social sanctions. Innocent Russian citizens - yes, even the rich oligarchs - will have to suffer the consequences of the actions by their President Putin. In this interconnected, globalized world we have today, I think sanctions should work in theory. Russia ultimately won’t risk a turn towards the situation of North Korea - utterly isolated from the world. You’d think at some point, Putin will capitulate and strike a deal.

The problem is: Ukraine and its citizens will have to suffer through a war to get there. Sad and tragic.