“Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.”
—Benjamin Haydon

I BEG to disagree with Philippine presidential debate panelist and University of the Philippines (UP) political science Prof. Clarita Carlos who posed this controversial question in a recent TV interview: “How long will the west push Putin until he takes the nuclear option?”

She rued that “the west just keeps on pushing and pushing him” insisting “it was really the west that created the Ukraine crisis.”

Prof. Carlos claimed the mercurial Putin “had been provoked” to attack Ukraine after the United States and the NATO “installed missiles in Poland” thus angering the disgraced Russian leader.

What news channel has Prof. Carlos been monitoring? What news website has she been reading? Who is coaching her on current events?

Where the hell did she get all these ridiculous and nauseating reports about the west (NATO and US) as the one that supposedly provoked Putin to kill Ukrainians?

Can’t Prof. Carlos see that the world, including many Russians right there in Moscow, is now united in solidarity against Putin?

That no one has sided with Kremlin’s evil intention to decapitate Kyiv out of its leader’s obsession to gain control over Ukraine and other former Soviet republics linguistically, culturally, politically, and militarily?

If Prof. Carlos is socialist, a Putin admirer, or anti-America, fine, I’ll understand; I’ll respect her position, but not after calling out that she’s patently and blatantly outdated and out of tune.

As an anti-war and pro-life advocate, I can not, in my conscience, allow Prof. Carlos to get away with her ludicrous assertion that “it was the west that provoked the Ukraine crisis.”

Let’s make this simple, Prof. Carlos. Putin declared war on Ukraine based on three outrageous lies: 1. That Ukraine does not have the right to exist separate from Russia; 2. That Ukraine is committing atrocities against Russian-speaking people; 3. And that the Russian military needs to “de-Nazify” Ukraine even if its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish.

I will again disagree when she compared the alleged installation by the US and NATO of missiles in Poland to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. There’s no comparison, madame.

Nikita Khrushchev had no respect from the very start for the “young” John F. Kennedy, and the Soviet Union secretly installed the nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores, with a purpose to launch attacks on American cities.

NATO and the U.S. never had plans to launch attacks on Russia as the move would contradict their values and the purpose why NATO was created.

It’s only in Putin’s diabolical thinking that Russia will be invaded. The truth is he is obsessed with nuclear weapon and he only wanted to up the nuclear ante as proven by his latest declaration when he failed to score a blitzkrieg after four days of heavy bombardment.

Unless Prof. Carlos is feigning ignorance, it’s inconceivable for the brilliant professor not to be aware of what is going on in Europe given her stock of knowledge on foreign affairs and temerity to brag about her credentials as “a reader of history” in her appearances in at least two nationwide televised media interviews.
I was waiting in vain for Prof. Carlos to express sympathy or, at least, mention something about the senseless murder of innocent civilians, children, women, and senior citizens caught in the crossfire when Russian soldiers swooped down on Ukraine and began shooting and bombing government and civilian buildings in an unprovoked, senseless, unjustified, and immoral attack for several days now.

Putin may have wrongly believed that the age of the American-led globalization was ending, that he chose to attack after the pandemic.

His biggest blunder was to underestimate the resolve of the courageous Ukrainians who refused to capitulate and have vowed to defend their land with their life.

Prof. Carlos could commit a terrible sin of misinformation if she continued to misread the sparks in Eastern Europe and ignored the sudden spasm of international outrage brought by Vladimir Putin’s skullduggery.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)