People who don’t agree that the Ukraine war is a just war that we must fight to the last Ukrainian are labeled Putin puppets. However, Americans should see the whole picture, taking the politics out of it. Two articles I read do give a different perspective from what you are seeing in the US media. As always, read with caution.
One article that you might consider reading is by Jeffrey Sachs, “The Real History of the War in Ukraine.” The second is “Why Are We in Ukraine,” by Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne. They provide perspectives we won’t get from the US media.
I’ve included some excerpts, and while I don’t agree with the motivations assigned to America in the second article, the authors back up their points with facts people should know.
My question is should we chance war with a nuclear nation?
THE REAL HISTORY OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE
“The American people urgently need to know the true history of the war in Ukraine and its current prospects,” Sachs writes. “Unfortunately, the mainstream media ––The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN –– have become mere mouthpieces of the government, repeating US President Joe Biden’s lies and hiding history from the public.
“Biden is again denigrating Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time accusing Putin of a “craven lust for land and power,” after declaring last year that “For God’s sake, that man [Putin] cannot stay in power.” Yet Biden is the one who is trapping Ukraine in an open-ended war by continuing to push NATO enlargement to Ukraine. He is afraid to tell the truth to the American and Ukrainian people, rejecting diplomacy, and opting instead for perpetual war.
“Expanding NATO to Ukraine, which Biden has long promoted, is a U.S. gambit that has failed…
“At this point, Biden knows full well that NATO enlargement to Ukraine would trigger World War III. That’s why behind the scenes Biden put NATO enlargement into low gear at the Vilnius NATO Summit. Yet rather than admit the truth – that Ukraine will not be part of NATO – Biden prevaricates, promising Ukraine’s eventual membership.
“In reality, he is committing Ukraine to ongoing bloodletting for no reason other than U.S. domestic politics, specifically Biden’s fear of looking weak to his political foes. (A half-century ago, Presidents Johnson and Nixon sustained the Vietnam War for essentially the same pathetic reason, and with the same lying, as the late Daniel Ellsberg brilliantly explained.)”
After reviewing Biden’s penchant for warmongering, Sachs lists the actual history and dates.
WHY ARE WE IN UKRAINE
The authors of the second article condemn the US’s goal of remaining the world’s main superpower. Are they right? I don’t know.
The points the authors make in the article are threefold. The US reignited the Cold War; taunted Russia with threats of moving onto their borders; and the war was always about Ukraine joining NATO.
The Introduction
“From Murmansk in the Arctic to Varna on the Black Sea, the armed camps of NATO and the Russian Federation menace each other across a new Iron Curtain. Unlike the long twilight struggle that characterized the Cold War, the current confrontation is running decidedly hot.
“As former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and former secretary of defense Robert Gates acknowledge approvingly, the United States is fighting a proxy war with Russia. Thanks to Washington’s efforts to arm and train the Ukrainian military and to integrate it into NATO systems, we are now witnessing the most intense and sustained military entanglement in the near-eighty-year history of global competition between the United States and Russia.
“Washington’s rocket launchers, missile systems, and drones are destroying Russia’s forces in the field; indirectly and otherwise, Washington and NATO are probably responsible for the preponderance of Russian casualties in Ukraine.
“The United States has reportedly provided real-time battlefield intelligence to Kyiv, enabling Ukraine to sink a Russian cruiser, fire on soldiers in their barracks, and kill as many as a dozen of Moscow’s generals. The United States may have already committed covert acts of war against Russia, but even if the report that blames the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines on a U.S. naval operation authorized by the Biden Administration is mistaken, Washington is edging close to direct conflict with Moscow.
“Assuredly, the nuclear forces of the United States and Russia, ever at the ready, are at a heightened state of vigilance. Save for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the risks of a swift and catastrophic escalation in the nuclear face-off between these superpowers is greater than at any point in history.
[…]
“Both the global role that Washington has assigned itself generally, and America’s specific policies toward NATO and Russia, have led inexorably to war—as many foreign policy critics, ourselves among them, have long warned that they would.
Point One: Reigniting the Cold War
“As the Soviets quit Eastern and Central Europe at the end of the Cold War, they imagined that NATO might be dissolved alongside the Warsaw Pact. …
Washington would have none of it….
“[The United States cavalierly enlarge[d] its nuclear and security commitments while creating ever-expanding frontiers of insecurity…
“Thus did the United States recklessly embark on a policy that would “restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations,” … Writing in 1997, [George] Kennan predicted that this move would be “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” …
Russia was expected to acquiesce to a new world order created and dominated by the United States. …
Point Two: Ignoring US Principles And Taunting Russia for Generations
But by so baldly intervening in Russia’s internal affairs, Washington signaled to Moscow that the sole superpower felt no obligation to follow the norms of great power politics and, perhaps more galling, no longer regarded Russia as a power with sensibilities that had to be considered.
[…]
“NATO and Russian troops nearly clashed at the airport in Kosovo’s provincial capital. (The confrontation was only averted when a British general defied the order of his superior, NATO supreme commander U.S. general Wesley Clark, to deploy troops to block the arrival of Russian paratroopers, telling him: “I’m not going to start World War III for you.”)
“Ignoring Moscow, NATO waged its war against Yugoslavia without U.N. sanction and destroyed civilian targets, killing some five hundred non-combatants (actions that Washington considers violations of international norms when conducted by other powers).
“The operation not only toppled a sovereign government, but also forcibly altered a sovereign state’s borders (again, actions that Washington considers violations of international norms when conducted by other powers).
“NATO similarly conducted its war in Libya in the face of valid Russian alarm. That war went beyond its defensive mandate—as Moscow protested—when NATO transformed its mission from the ostensible protection of civilians to the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime.
The escalation, justified by a now-familiar process involving false and misleading stories pedaled by armed rebels and other interested parties, produced years of violent disorder in Libya and made it a haven for jihadis. Both wars were fought against states that, however distasteful, posed no threat to any NATO member.
“Their upshot was the recognition in both Moscow and Washington of NATO’s new power, ambit, and purpose. The alliance had been transformed from a supposedly mutual defense pact designed to repel an attack on its members into the preeminent military instrument of American power in the post–Cold War world.
Point Three: The War Was Always About Ukraine Joining NATO
“Western experts have long acknowledged the unanimity and intensity of Russians’ fear of Ukraine joining NATO. In his 1995 study of Russian views on NATO expansion—which surveyed elite and popular opinion and incorporated off-the-record interviews with political, military, and diplomatic figures from across the political spectrum—
“Anatol Lieven, the Russia scholar and then Moscow correspondent for the Times of London, concluded that “moves toward NATO membership for Ukraine would trigger a really ferocious Russian response,” and that “NATO membership for Ukraine would be regarded by Russians as a catastrophe of epochal proportions.” Quoting a Russian naval officer, he noted that preventing NATO’s expansion into Ukraine and its consequent control of Crimea was “something for which Russians will fight.”
Towards the end, the authors go to some length reviewing the problems we face in ending this war. It’s worth reading.
Not going to war has been associated with anti-Americanism. Donald Trump changed that thinking for many Republicans. Maybe this war is necessary, but Americans should hear both sides.
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