While this blog has an obvious and clear partisan position on the upcoming presidential election, this post is bipartisan. In her recent interview Sarah Palin voiced strong support for Georgia and Ukraine. Her running mate John McCain has repeatedly aired the same views while both Obama and Biden have not been shy about their support of NATO membership for both of the pastel 'democracies'.

It is Wonks Anonymous considered view that the US and Western Europe have very little business in this part of the world and very little standing as advocates of human rights. Nor does he think that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the history and population of Ukraine would support that nation in a strong anti-Russian policy. Here are some simple truths about Ukraine:

• Ukraine's population is 40% ethnic Russian. The current government that unites the Ukrainian nationalist elements is an internally divided coalition that barely holds its own against the ethnic Russian minority.
• The Russians have been there for a long time, longer than say the Gringos in the US Southwest. For at least two or three centuries the area has experienced conquest, battles and migrations. In addition to Poles, Tartars and assorted other nationalities many Russians have moved into Ukraine and settled there. It is their home.
• Some parts of Ukraine, the Crimea for example, were never settled by Ukrainians. The Ukrainian Black Sea coast, The Crimea, was conquered by Peter the Great. Before Peter it was a Tartar state.

Most Russians in Ukraine are less than sympathetic to actions directed against Russia. Any military or political adventures based in Ukraine and directed against Russia could only lead to disaster, possibly civil war.

The Georgia for Georgians policy promoted by the first Georgian government to break away from the Soviet Union provoked the South Ossetian and Abkhazian separatist movements. Because Russians in Ukraine are not isolated in compact regions, a Ukraine for Ukrainians policy would have even more destructive consequences.

We should encourage our friends in the 'orange revolution' to live in amity with their Russian neighbors, if only for humanitarian reasons. At the same time we need to work out the parameters for Ukrainian autonomy and neutrality with Russia.

Instead we seem to be offering Ukraine promises of help and support in an increasingly anti-Russian policy, a policy that will blow up in their faces. Will we be there when it explodes? Wonks Anonymous thinks not.