Photo by Alexandra Morozova on Unsplash

The War in Ukraine Looks More Like a Battle for Dependence than Freedom

Win friends and supporters through dependence. It’s the American Way.

ScottCDunn
6 min readSep 11

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One thing I’ve noticed about abuse is that all acts of abuse foster dependence. The war in Ukraine is about abuse, and that abuse is about creating the dependence required to keep business profitable. Notice how Ukraine is dependent on America for the weapons it needs to fight Russia, money to pay for government, and the diplomacy required to get the rest of the world on board.

Every parent who raises their kids without sparing the rod seems unaware that it is through collaboration that we learn the skills of living. When we teach skills we teach independence. When we teach abuse we create dependence because abuse does not confer the skills required for independence. It seems that the people who wish for Russia’s defeat believe that abusing Russia back will confer the skill of good citizenship.

Here is the difference. You can tempt a kid with marshmallows and punish him for eating them without asking. Or you can explain to the kid what’s in the marshmallows and what they do to your body when you eat them. You can show the kid that the temporary pleasure derived from the marshmallow is not worth the detriment of your health.

The war is also about temptation or a lack of discipline. If we look carefully at how the war came to be, there is a lack of discipline on the American side. I can talk about the problems that Russia has, but someone else has that covered. He’ll tell you how we’re supposed to hate Russia and everything Russian. The biggest problem I see with the reporting on the war is the lack of discipline to report America’s part in it.

America is an abuser. Every country that America has ever invaded has been abused by America. We plunder their resources and we call that free enterprise. We threaten people in foreign countries with our military might and ask how much they will pay for protection. We honestly believe that we’re helping people, even when we send soldiers to kill other people in other countries. That’s abuse.

And that abuse fosters dependence.

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