{"id":1368030,"date":"2022-03-10T05:25:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T10:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1368030"},"modified":"2022-03-10T07:06:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T12:06:42","slug":"sending-fighter-jets-to-ukraine-raises-the-specter-of-the-cold-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/sending-fighter-jets-to-ukraine-raises-the-specter-of-the-cold-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Sending Fighter Jets To Ukraine Raises The Specter Of The Cold War"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsending-fighter-jets-to-ukraine-raises-the-specter-of-the-cold-war%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1368030&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/51891581375_e71c4e9e43_k.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The ongoing MiG-29 fiasco in Ukraine is a prime example of the incompetence of President Joe Biden\u2019s administration. America was promised that electing Biden would put the \u201cadults back in charge.\u201d Instead, we\u2019re led by a geriatric man surrounded by ideologues whose attitudes were formed in university safe-space bubbles and later solidified at Georgetown University cocktail parties. (\u201cDon\u2019t like the price of gas? Get a Tesla or ride the bus, peasant.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Not to worry, though, Biden has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/harris-to-travel-to-poland-romania-as-russia-continues-invasion-of-ukraine-for-a-fourteenth-day\">dispatched<\/a> Vice President Kamala Harris to Poland to solve the problem. The diplomatic and military affairs odyssey of trying to replenish the Ukrainian Air Force\u2019s inventory of Soviet-era combat aircraft is illustrative of the descent of the American foreign policy establishment.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re said to be dragging their feet on the transfer of combat aircraft because Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened war should the transfer occur. This is highly unlikely \u2014 more so, given the less-than-impressive performance of the Russian military.<\/p>\n<p>If Talleyrand said of the restored Bourbon dynasty after the abdication of Napoleon, \u201cThey had learned nothing and forgotten nothing,\u201d then our foreign policy elite could be said to have \u201cLearned nothing and forgotten everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 1950, as the Cold War was ramping up, the Soviet Union and People\u2019s Republic of China gave permission for North Korea\u2019s Kim Il-Sung (Kim Jong-un\u2019s grandfather) to invade South Korea, which was then garrisoned by a small number of U.S. troops. The Soviets provided tanks, aircraft, infantry weapons, a large amount of ammunition, and other supplies to the North Korean military. The Soviets also sent combat pilots and anti-aircraft gunners to North Korea. These men killed Americans in combat.<\/p>\n<p>But because an open admission of belligerent involvement would have serious ramifications for escalating tensions between the two nuclear powers (the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949), the Soviet assistance was covert. Soviet pilots were instructed not to speak Russian over their radios and their MiG-15s flew with the markings of the North Korean People\u2019s Army Air Force or the Chinese People\u2019s Liberation Army Air Force, although American pilots often overheard the Soviet pilots speaking or swearing in Russian during the stress of aerial combat.<\/p>\n<p>Some six Soviet pilots achieved \u201cace\u201d status (downing five or more aircraft), with Soviets downing at least 142 U.N. (mostly U.S.) aircraft. A decade later, the Soviet Union provided significant support to North Vietnam in its Cold War proxy war with the South. In a speech in Moscow in 1971, senior North Vietnamese General V\u00f5 Nguy\u00ean Gi\u00e1p <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/perceive-more\/the-little-known-role-of-the-soviet-union-in-the-vietnam-war-2da12f2b6c4e\">admitted<\/a>, \u201cWe would like to carry on this mission together with the Soviet Union, because no one can do it without the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About 3,000 Soviet military advisors were stationed in North Vietnam during the war. As in Korea, they killed Americans in direct combat. Some 16 of them were, in turn, killed, compared to the 58,281 Americans killed and more than 1.5 million Vietnamese lost on both sides.<\/p>\n<p>Soviet <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/perceive-more\/the-little-known-role-of-the-soviet-union-in-the-vietnam-war-2da12f2b6c4e\">involvement<\/a> included the training of North Vietnamese fighter pilots and anti-aircraft crews starting in 1964, as well as the manning of anti-aircraft batteries in North Vietnam \u2014 successfully shooting down American combat aircraft. Ironically, these Soviet anti-aircraft personnel were <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/perceive-more\/the-little-known-role-of-the-soviet-union-in-the-vietnam-war-2da12f2b6c4e\">mainly Ukrainian<\/a>. Soviet commando teams also conducted missions against American targets and Soviet snipers may have even operated in South Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p>As an aside, in 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union, I helped stand up and manage a <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=esweN4zobJ4C&#038;pg=PA174&#038;lpg=PA174&#038;dq=%22california+kamchatka+company%22&#038;source=bl&#038;ots=99NPzte8it&#038;sig=ACfU3U2uYAdDbWKcf54oyft9U6ecxeZoZA&#038;hl=en&#038;sa=X&#038;ved=2ahUKEwjS58_Ep7n2AhXVGs0KHXMgASEQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&#038;q=%22california%20kamchatka%20company%22&#038;f=false\">cargo aircraft refueling business in Kamchatka<\/a>. The region\u2019s vice governor at the time was Boris Sinchenko, an ethnic Ukrainian. Many of the people in Kamchatka and to the north in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2014\/apr\/03\/kolyma-diaries-jacek-hugo-bader-review\">Magadan<\/a> (the logistics hub of what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dubbed the \u201cThe Gulag Archipelago\u201d ) were Ukrainian\u2014exiled there as Stalin sought to extinguish the troublesome embers of Ukrainian national identity. <\/p>\n<p>In a rare moment of vodka-assisted candor, Sinchenko (also rendered Zinchenko) told me he was an \u201cair traffic controller\u201d in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Sinchenko\u2019s euphemism in aid of polite conversation couldn\u2019t hide what he was really doing in Hanoi\u2014he was operating air defense radars that aimed to kill Americans.<\/p>\n<p>Such was the Cold War. Both sides probed and tested each other\u2019s will on the periphery, often resulting in deadly confrontations. But both sides tightly controlled the ramp to escalation, each wanting to avoid a general war that might involve nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s context, the issue of MiG-29s is no different from the provision of Javelin and other antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Ukraine, a sovereign nation. Further, these arms shipments \u2014 regardless of Putin\u2019s threats \u2014 are significantly less provocative than the Soviets directly killing American servicemen in the theater of combat in Korea and Vietnam. <\/p>\n<p>For U.S. and NATO assistance to Ukraine to rise to that level, we\u2019d have to see American and allied fighter aircraft, piloted by Americans and operating from Ukrainian bases \u2014 but pretending to be Ukrainian \u2014 directly engaging Russian forces. To again draw from history, even that wouldn\u2019t be considered a declaration of war by longstanding Cold War precedent.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Chuck DeVore is vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He&#8217;s the author of two books, &#8220;The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,&#8221; and &#8220;China Attacks,&#8221; a novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ongoing MiG-29 fiasco in Ukraine is a prime example of the incompetence of President Joe Biden\u2019s administration. America was promised that electing Biden would put the \u201cadults back in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}