To those who are totally ignorant of Russia, meaning all of the American political elites and most of the foreign policy expert community, Russia is easy to comprehend, an easy target for labels like “autocracy” and “imperialist.” But then these folks don’t care much about the peculiarities of friends and allies abroad, so long as they are totally subservient to Washington. Why should they bother themselves with the realities of a country that stretches across 11 time zones, accounts for nearly 15% of the Earth’s land mass and has 145 million people drawn from a multitude of ethnic groups or “nationalities”?
Sunday night’s edition of the Vladimir Solovyov talk show gave an unequivocal negative answer to both questions in my title thanks to some extraordinary statements by one panelist, deputy chairman of the State Duma Aleksandr Mikhailovich Babakov.
Leaders and representatives of the Duma parties outside the governing United Russia group have been a permanent fixture of the Solovyov show going back years. Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov used to be an invitee, but he was not a good conversationalist and has disappeared from view. Instead, the Communist parliamentarian and chair of the Duma committee on relations with the Community of Independent States [former Soviet Union republics] Leonid Kalashnikov is a regular panelist. He and Solovyov engage in sparring, the one standing for Communism in general and a full war economy today, the other for the free market. Their contests are as predictable as televised American wrestling used to be.
The founder and leader of the right wing Liberal Democrats (LDPR), Vladimir Zhirinovsky, was a frequent guest on the Solovyov show till his death in the midst of the Covid pandemic. Solovyov shared many of Zhirinovsky’s nationalist, anti-Western views and allowed him to verbally whiplash other panelists. I know this from the receiving end when I was denounced by Zhirinovsky as a spy during my one invitation to the show back in 2016. But then again, most any Western visitor was a spy in Zhirinovsky’s lexicon and it always would draw a laugh from the audience.
Zhirinovsky’s serious contributions to the panels were often in connection with his expert knowledge of Turkish affairs as a speaker of the language. He also roundly criticized the Putin government for its gently-gently approach to foreign relations. If Zhirinovsky had his way, the Russians would have bombed Berlin long ago. As for foreign aid, Zhirinovsky did not believe in the way it was practiced in the past by the Soviet Union with blank checks to the friends of Russia. Instead he called upon the government to use its diplomatic efforts to establish relations abroad that brought net revenues to Moscow, in emulation of the United States. As you will see below, I think this part of Zhirinovsky’s policy platform has influenced the Putin government. However, it would be better if Russia’s senior statesmen did not openly show their intentions.
Zhirinovsky’s successor as chair of the party bloc in the Duma, Leonid Slutsky, is dull as dull can be and never appears on the talk show. However, a fellow LDPR deputy, former KGB operative Andrei Lugovoy, who is wanted by UK police on suspicion of the murder of Litvinenko, is invited fairly frequently by Solovyov and adds some spice to the discussions of relations with the West. He is no friend of London and is pushing a much more aggressive line than the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Now I turn to the panelist last night who so impressed me: Babakov. Let us begin with what he said.
The main topic he pursued was a very harsh critique of the work of the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, who is one of the relatively few survivors of the Liberal group of economic advisers at the center of power for well more than a decade. She worked under Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. She worked under minister, later Sberbank chief executive German Gref. Both were/are Putin protégés. And, most importantly, she clearly enjoys the protection of Vladimir Putin today. In that regard, Babakov’s criticism of her is ….a direct criticism of Putin himself. And since what Babakov was saying is also being said by many ordinary Russians, its airing on state television is politically important.
Babakov told us that Nabiullina is leading the economy into the desert by its current policy of very high interest rates to combat inflation, all of which results in falling investments and stagnating production that, in turn, will set off a new round of inflation as output does not keep pace with buying power and demand. Babakov has every right to challenge the country’s financial management: he holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Moscow State University and is a successful entrepreneur who made his fortune by companies he co-founded in Ukraine in the energy sector and diverse interests including a major hotel in Kiev.
Babakov explained at length last night why Russia should look more closely at the Chinese model of economic and financial management, wherein the equivalent of Russia’s Central Bank, the Bank of China, is not an independent actor but works in close coordination with the government to support its growth plans and sets out different interest rates and conditions for the different levels of business, from small enterprises to medium and very large enterprises. Moreover, Babakov praised the Chinese rules on currency management and especially the controls on currency transfers abroad. Whereas in Russia anyone with the funds in his account can transfer up to one million dollars abroad each month, in China the limit is a thousand times less.
These remarks by Babakov are in direct contradiction with Nabiullina’s public rejection of the Chinese model as unsuitable to Russia last week at a meeting on finance at which other heavy hitters in the field, including the chairman of VTB bank (the former Foreign Trade Bank) Andrei Kostin also spoke. Kostin, by the way, had been advocating for a Chinese like bifurcation of the foreign exchange market between domestic and foreign transaction exchange rates.
Babakov also had his spear out for Finance Minister Siluanov. He repeated Siluanov’s stupid sounding advice to the two hundred parliamentarians from most Latin American countries who gathered in Moscow last week as guests of the Russian State Duma. Per Babakov, who as Duma deputy chair took part in all the proceedings, the visitors included many speakers of their national parliaments and all had made the trip to Moscow in defiance of heavy lobbying by the U.S. embassy in their country to keep them away from Russia’s embrace. What impressed him most was that the Latin Americans all expressed their support for Russia, their correct understanding of the causes of the war in Ukraine and their rejection of any sanctions against Moscow. They enthusiastically embraced Putin’s speech to them.
Of course, implied Babakov, during their stay the visitors hoped to hear about Russian investment plans in their region. Instead, Siluanov told them that money is not the essential thing in life, that what you need is to be smart and to have good hands so that you can get along on less money. To Babakov’s thinking, Siluanov was singing from the wrong scores in the wrong opera.
Will the attacks on the government’s bank chief and finance minister by Babakov and others like him bring them down? Quite possibly. The ruble’s slipping below 100 to the dollar yesterday has unnerved middle class Russians. If they listened to Kostin’s projection that in the coming year the ruble’s value in dollar terms may fall further by half, then they will be an unstoppable force against Nabiullina and the other free market defenders in Putin’s circle.
I have watched Babakov on the Solovyov show many times and he always was dapperly dressed. His demeanor is avuncular. You understand at once that he is not in anyone’s pocket. He has changed his party affiliations several times over the years. For a time he headed the very patriotic Rodina (Homeland) party that was founded by the maverick politician Dmitry Rogozin. Then he spent several years in the left-of-center A Just Russia party headed by Sergei Mironov. He quit that and took a position in a public activism organization under the aegis of the governing United Russia party. Next he was a founder of the Za pravdu (For truth) party which eventually formed an alliance with Mironov in a hyphenated joint organization.
From 2003 to 2016 Babakov was an elected member of the Duma. From 2016 to 2020, he served in the upper chamber of the Russian legislature with the title of Senator. But that was an appointive position. Next he took what is nominally a step down to run again for a seat in the State Duma, won and rose to deputy speaker there. Meanwhile, he has served on a number of Presidential missions, including responsibility for relations with organizations of compatriots abroad and on a council overseeing implementation of the country’s National Projects.
Clearly Babakov is an insider in the Russian power elite while always having freedom of movement, and as Sunday night indicated, freedom of expression. Notwithstanding his financial declarations before standing for election to the Duma showing that he owns almost nothing and has annual revenues of perhaps $20,000 per year, his Wikipedia entry tells us that he owns an estate in France said to be worth $16 million and an apartment on the Rue de l’Université in Paris. Since he is on the EU sanctions list, it is doubtful he gets much pleasure from these properties today.
To understand the complexity of Russia’s power structure, it pays to take a look at the pre-political biography of Babakov. He was born in 1963 and grew up in the capital, Kishinev (today’s Chișinău), of what is today the poorest state in Europe, Moldova (then the Moldavian SSR). So how did this boy from the far provinces get into Moscow State University and then make his way to the top of Russian-Ukrainian business and political elites?
First, it happened because Soviet society and now Russian society was and is very mobile, with many social ladders for kids with brains and talent. To those who doubt this because it does not jibe with the concept of a corrupt, autocratic regime, I say: rethink the latter, not the former.
Secondly, it happened because at the time when young Babakov was ready to enroll in a university Moldova was doing very well. It was home base of party leader Leonid Brezhnev and received priority investment into its agrarian economy and also into industry. It was closely linked to Moscow by many daily flights, more, for example than to Soviet Georgia. I know: I was there at the time. In 1978 I visited the orchards and vegetable farms of Moldova in the company of Castle & Cooke Inc. top management for furtherance of their plans to grow iceberg lettuce in the USSR. I wrote about this in my Memoirs of a Russianist, Volume I.
The agricultural machinery company FMC had very extensive farm projects in Moldova at the time to grow tomatoes and process them for puree. In another domain, the American pharmaceutical company Abbott Labs built the first infant formula factory (Similac) in the Soviet Union in Moldova in the mid-1970s. I saw that the shops in Kishinev were better stocked than those in Moscow. It was this Moldova that was the launching pad for Mr. Babakov.
Surely it was this personal experience of how a distant and formerly poor land can become prosperous under state planning and then revert to dire poverty under free market management and adverse geopolitical developments that shapes Mr. Babakov’s beliefs on the benefits of state dirigisme today. There are many others with similar experience and critical views of the now inappropriate Liberal economic policies being pursued under Vladimir Putin. They will probably win out.
In April, The American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA) released a statement condemning the arrest and detainment of the American journalist Evan Gershkovich by Russian authorities on espionage charges.
Sadly, 6 months later, we are compelled to protest yet another arrest and detainment of an American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Upon her arrest, RFE/RL president Jeffrey Gedmin released a statement saying Ms. Kurmasheva, “Needs to be released so she can return to her family immediately.”
We agree.
The arrests of Mr. Gershkovich and Ms. Kurmasheva are an affront to the values of free inquiry and will only increase the already dangerous level of tension between the United States and Russia.
We call for their unconditional release.
We further call for all parties to the war in Ukraine to engage in meaningful dialogue to put an end to this conflict which has cost the lives of so many.
—The Board of the American Committee for US-Russia Accord
We are entering the end stage of the 30-year U.S. neoconservative debacle in Ukraine. The neocon plan to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO has failed. Decisions now by the U.S. and Russia will matter enormously for peace, security, and wellbeing for the entire world.
Four events have shattered the neocon hopes for NATO enlargement eastward, to Ukraine, Georgia, and onward. The first is straightforward. Ukraine has been devastated on the battlefield, with tragic and appalling losses. Russia is winning the war of attrition, an outcome that was predictable from the start but which the neocons and mainstream media continue to deny.
The second is the collapsing support in Europe for the U.S. neocon strategy. Poland no longer speaks with Ukraine. Hungary has long opposed the neocons. Slovakia has elected an anti-neocon government. E.U. leaders—including Macron, Meloni, Sanchez, Scholz, Sunak, and others—have disapproval ratings far higher than approvals.
The third is the cut in U.S. financial support for Ukraine. The grassroots of the Republican Party, several GOP Presidential candidates, and a growing number of Republican members of Congress, oppose more spending on Ukraine. In the stop-gap bill to keep the government running, Republicans stripped away new financial support for Ukraine. The White House has called for new aid legislation, but this will be an uphill fight.
The fourth, and most urgent from Ukraine’s point of view, is the likelihood of a Russian offensive. Ukraine’s casualties are in the hundreds of thousands, and Ukraine has burned through its artillery, air defenses, tanks, and others heavy weapons. Russia is likely to follow with a massive offensive.
Biden foolishly refused to negotiate with Putin in December 2021. It’s time to negotiate now.
The neocons have created utter disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. The U.S. political system has not yet held the neocons to account, since foreign policy is carried out with little public or congressional scrutiny to date. Mainstream media have sided with the slogans of the neocons.
Ukraine is at risk of economic, demographic, and military collapse. What should the U.S. government do to face this potential disaster?
Urgently, it should change course. Britain advises the U.S. to escalate, as Britain is stuck with 19th-century imperial reveries. U.S. neocons are stuck with imperial bravado. Cooler heads urgently need to prevail.
President Joe Biden should immediately inform President Vladimir Putin that the U.S. will end NATO enlargement eastward if the U.S. and Russia reach a new agreement on security arrangements. By ending NATO expansion, the U.S. can still save Ukraine from the policy debacles of the past 30 years.
Biden should agree to negotiate a security arrangement of the kind, though not precise details, of Putin’s proposals of December 17, 2021. Biden foolishly refused to negotiate with Putin in December 2021. It’s time to negotiate now.
There are four keys to an agreement. First, as part of an overall agreement, Biden should agree that NATO will not enlarge eastward, but not reverse the past NATO enlargement. NATO would of course not tolerate Russian encroachments in existing NATO states. Both Russia and the U.S. would pledge to avoid provocations near Russia’s borders, including provocative missile placement, military exercises, and the like.
Second, the new U.S.-Russia security agreement should cover nuclear weapons. The U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, followed by the placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania, gravely inflamed tensions, which were further exacerbated by the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Agreement in 2019 and Russia’s suspension of the New Start Treaty in 2023. Russian leaders have repeatedly pointed to U.S. missiles near Russia, unconstrained by the abandoned ABM Treaty, as a dire threat to Russia’s national security.
Third, Russia and Ukraine would agree on new borders, in which the overwhelmingly ethnic Russian Crimea and heavily ethnic Russian districts of eastern Ukraine would remain part of Russia. The border changes would be accompanied by security guarantees for Ukraine backed unanimously by the UN Security Council and other states such as Germany, Turkey, and India.
Fourth, as part of a settlement, the U.S., Russia, and the E.U. would re-establish trade, finance, cultural exchange, and tourist relations. It’s certainly time once again to hear Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky in U.S. and European concert halls.
Border changes are a last resort, and should be made under the auspices of the UN Security Council. They must never be an invitation to further territorial demands, such as by Russia regarding ethnic Russians in other countries. Yet borders change, and the U.S. has recently backed two border changes. NATO bombed Serbia for 47 days until it relinquished the Albanian-majority region of Kosovo. In 2008, the U.S. recognized Kosovo as a sovereign nation. The U.S. government similarly backed South Sudan’s insurgency to break away from Sudan.
If Russia, Ukraine, or the U.S. subsequently violated the new agreement, they would be challenging the rest of the world. As President John F. Kennedy Jr. once observed, “even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.”
The U.S. neocons carry much blame for undermining Ukraine’s 1991 borders. Russia did not claim Crimea until after the U.S.-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Nor did Russia annex the Donbas after 2014, instead calling on Ukraine to honor the UN-backed Minsk II agreement, based on autonomy for the Donbas. The neocons preferred to arm Ukraine to retake the Donbas by force rather than grant the Donbas autonomy.
The long-term key to peace in Europe is collective security as called for by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). According to OSCE agreements, OSCE member states “will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.” Neocon unilateralism undermined Europe’s collective security by pushing NATO enlargement without regard to third parties, notably Russia. Europe—including the E.U., Russia, and Ukraine—needs more OSCE and less neocon unilateralism as key to lasting peace in Europe.
Consortium News sued the United States government and NewsGuard Technologies for allegedly defaming the independent media organization and violating the organization’s First Amendment rights.
A complaint [PDF] filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York claims that the Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command and NewsGuard are “carrying out a governmental program” under a contract known as “Misinformation Fingerprints” that involves the public labeling, targeting, and stigmatizing of news organizations that “differ or dissent from U.S. policy in connection with Russia or Ukraine.”
Media organizations that differ with U.S. official policy are labeled not “trustworthy,” purveyors of “false content,” or treated as “Russian propagandists” that are “anti-U.S.”
To remedy the alleged defamation and attack on freedom of the press, Consortium News seeks $13.6 million in “punitive” damages—twice the capital raised by NewsGuard in its push for investors.
Consortium News also requests an injunction to bar NewsGuard from continuing their practice of censorship that involves affixing false “nutrition labels” to their published articles.
“The First Amendment rights of all American media are threatened by this arrangement with the Defense Department that defames and threatens to abridge the speech of U.S. media groups,” declared Bruce Afran, an attorney representing Consortium News.
Afran added, “When media groups such as Consortium News are condemned by the government as ‘anti-U.S.’ and are accused of publishing ‘false content’ because they disagree with U.S. policies, the result is self-censorship and destruction of the public debate intended by the First Amendment.”
According to the complaint, the Defense Department granted NewsGuard a nearly $750,000 contract for tracking “misinformation” in September 2021.
“Our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the US and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China,” NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz acknowledged in March 2023. “Our analysts alert officials in the U.S. and in other democracies, including Ukraine, about new false narratives targeting America and its allies, and we provide an understanding of how this disinformation spreads online.”
NewsGuard’s board of directors as well as its advisory board include former Homeland Security director Tom Ridge, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden, and former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
While Crovitz and the startup’s other CEO Steven Brill are veterans of the news media, Consortium News contends that NewsGuard is far from a “journalistic endeavor.” Its “reviewers” contact organizations they intend to “target” and act as if they are “reporters.” However, at any given time, they are effectively collecting intelligence that will be shared with Cybercom involving media organizations that supposedly spread Russian “misinformation.”
If NewsGuard takes issue with a handful of articles from a media organization, then every article published by that entity will have a “warning label.” It does not matter if the vast majority of this content has not been disputed by the company.
The company has only disputed six articles out of more than 20,000 articles, according to Consortium News. When subscribers use NewsGuard’s browser tool, all articles on the site carry warnings.
More specifically, Consortium News asserts that NewsGuard’s defamation began on August 11, 2022, when they attached the following “red flag” (now a blue flag) and warning described the organization as a “website that covers international politics from a left-wing, anti-U.S. perspective that has published false claims about the Ukraine-Russia war and other international conflicts.”
NewsGuard’s reviews involve attaching “nutrition labels” that tell subscribers of their service that Consortium News “repeatedly” publishes “false content,” refuses to “correct or clarify errors,” and declines to “gather and present information responsibly.”
Exhibit filed along with the amended complaint filed in the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York
Additionally, the label is affixed to content that Consortium News republishes to their website. That means that an article published by Common Dreams on the war in Ukraine can have a 100% rating on Common Dreams but a 47.5% rating when the “identical text” is posted to Consortium News.
Before the “nutrition labels” first appeared on Consortium News’ articles, NewsGuard employee Zachary Fishman contacted the media organization to conduct a “review” of the site’s “publication of false content.” For example, Fishman singled out a February 2022 article headlined, “Ukraine: Guides to Reflection” and called attention to this portion of the article.
Hence, the inflation of Russian behavior in Ukraine (where Washington organized a coup against a democratically elected government because we disliked its political complexion) and Syria (where Russia’s intervention is at the request of the established government while the U.S. commitment to occupying parts of it has no legal basis).
NewsGuard took issue with holding the U.S. government responsible for the role that U.S. officials played in the coup in Ukraine in 2014.
Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria showed NewsGuard that many of the details questioned by NewsGuard could be found in reports published by BBC, The Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, and The Progressive. But those sites do not have labels that cast doubt on the veracity of their journalism.
Such false claims about Consortium News, as the complaint asserts, violate the media organization’s First Amendment rights because NewsGuard is working jointly with Cybercom and receives payment to “punish or discourage speech that is contrary to U.S. policy positions.”
NewsGuard has an initiative with public libraries and libraries of public universities. On the company’s website, they highlight a “case study” from Cienega High School in Vail, Arizona, which is a public school.
“With NewsGuard, the information is there for the students,” said Chris Salvagio, a Cienega High School teacher [PDF]. “Kids don’t really know the meaning of credibility and transparency, so having NewsGuard’s criteria for each listed in a way that’s accessible and easy to use helps, too, by helping us come up with a clear definition of what a reliable source is. NewsGuard really helped me buttress the things I’ve already taught before.”
In January 2019, the New York Times published a profile of the company that described its plans to fight “fake news.” Crovitz seemed to pose the type of government involvement in news labeling that Cybercom has encouraged his company to perform.
“We’d be very uncomfortable if the government were mandating anything with regard to news,” Crovitz declared, when asked if they wanted to see an equivalent to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) labeling for media. “That would violate free speech values. You have the First Amendment.”
In May 2022, PayPal banned Consortium News from using their service but provided little to no explanation for their decision. It is unclear to what extent NewsGuard’s labeling may have influenced PayPal’s censorious action.
Finally, NewsGuard has also abused its influence over journalism and fact-checking online by labeling WikiLeaks with a red warning.
“This website fails to meet several basic standards of credibility and transparency,” NewsGuard deceitfully stated. A “nutrition label” described WikiLeaks as a “publisher of confidential documents, often acquired from leakers and hackers. WikiLeaks published hacked emails, traced to the Kremlin, that hurt Democrats ahead of the 2016 presidential election.”
NewsGuard acknowledged that WikiLeaks did not “repeatedly publish false content” and, in fact, revealed who is in charge, including “any possible conflicts of interest.” It did not publish “deceptive headlines.”
Yet the tracking tool maintained the site failed to gather and present information responsibly and did not handle the “difference between news and opinion responsibly,” which are common responses from the US national security state to undermine the credibility of independent media organizations that challenge dominant narratives.
While the U.S. Justice Department prosecutes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (a case that Consortium News has extensively covered), NewsGuard seeks to scare students, academics, and the general public into avoiding the transparency website as a resource, even though news media like the Washington Post and New York Times have frequently cited documents from WikiLeaks in their coverage of U.S. foreign policy.
Full press conference with Bruce Afran and Joe Lauria on the new lawsuit:
The Many Lessons of the Ukraine War Remarks to the East Bay Citizens for Peace
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) Visiting Scholar, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University The Barrington Library, Barrington, Rhode Island, 26 September 2023
I want to speak to you tonight about Ukraine – what has happened to it and why, how it is likely to emerge from the ordeal to which great power rivalry has subjected it; and what we can learn from this. I do so with some trepidation and a warning to this audience. My talk, like the conflict in Ukraine, is a long and complicated one. It contradicts propaganda that has been very convincing. My talk will offend anyone committed to the official narrative. The way the American media have dealt with the Ukraine war brings to mind a comment by Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”
It is said that, in war, truth is the first casualty. War is typically accompanied by a fog of official lies. No such fog has ever been as thick as in the Ukraine war. While many hundreds of thousands of people have fought and died in Ukraine, the propaganda machines in Brussels, Kyiv, London, Moscow, and Washington have worked overtime to ensure that we take passionate sides, believe what we want to believe, and condemn anyone who questions the narrative we have internalized. No one not on the front lines has any real idea of what has been happening in this war. What we know is only what our governments and other supporters of the war want us to know. And they have developed the bad habit of inhaling their own propaganda, which guarantees delusional policies.
Every government that is a party to the Ukraine War – Kyiv, Moscow, Washington, and other NATO capitals – has been guilty of various degrees of self-deception and blundering misfeasance. The consequences for all have been dire. For Ukraine, they have been catastrophic. A radical rethinking of policy by all concerned is long overdue.
Whence and Whither NATO?
First, some necessary background. NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) came into being to defend the European countries within the post-World War II American sphere of influence against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its satellite nations. NATO’s area of responsibility was the territory of its members in North America and Western Europe, but nowhere beyond that. The alliance helped maintain a balance of power and keep the peace in Europe during the four-plus decades of the Cold War. In 1991, however, the USSR dissolved, and the Cold War ended. That eliminated any credible threat to NATO members’ territory and raised this issue: if NATO was still the answer to something, what was the question?
The U.S. armed forces had no problem responding to that conundrum. They had compelling vested interests in the preservation of NATO.
NATO had created and sustained a post-World War II European role and presence for the U.S. military,
This justified a much larger U.S. force structure and many more highly desirable billets for flag officers[1] than would otherwise exist,
NATO enhanced the international stature of the American armed forces while fostering a unique U.S. competence in multinational alliance and coalition management, and
It offered tours of duty in Europe that made peacetime military service more attractive to U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.
Then, too, the 20th century had appeared to underscore that U.S. security was inseparable from that of other north Atlantic countries. The existence of European empires ensured that wars among the great powers of Europe – the Napoleonic wars, World War I and World War II – soon morphed into world wars. NATO was how the United States dominated and managed the Euro-Atlantic region in the Cold War. Disbanding NATO or a U.S. withdrawal from it would, arguably, just free Europeans to renew their quarreling and start yet another war that might not be confined to Europe.
So, NATO had to be kept in business. The obvious way to accomplish that was to find a new, non-European role for the organization. NATO, it came to be said, had to go “out of area or out of business.” In other words, the alliance had to be repurposed to project military power beyond the territories of its Western European and North American member states.
In 1998, NATO went to war with Serbia, bombing it in 1999 to detach Kosovo from it. In 2001, in response to the ‘9/11’ terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, it joined the U.S. in occupying and attempting to pacify Afghanistan.[2] In 2011, NATO fielded forces to engineer regime change in Libya.
The Coup in Kyiv, Crimea, and the Rebellion of Russian Speaking Ukrainians
In 2014, after a well-prepared[3] US-sponsored anti-Russian coup in Kyiv, Ukrainian ultranationalists banned the official use of Russian and other minority languages in their country and, at the same time, affirmed Ukraine’s intention to become part of NATO. Among other consequences, Ukrainian membership in NATO would place Russia’s 250-year-old naval base in the Crimean city of Sebastopol under NATO and hence U.S. control. Crimea was Russian-speaking and had several times voted not to be part of Ukraine. So, citing the precedent of NATO’S violent intervention to separate Kosovo from Serbia, Russia organized a referendum in Crimea that endorsed its reincorporation in the Russian Federation. The results were consistent with previous votes on the issue.
Meanwhile, in response to Ukraine’s banning of the use of Russian in government offices and education, predominantly Russian-speaking areas in the country’s Donbas region attempted to secede. Kyiv sent forces to suppress the rebellion. Moscow responded by backing Ukrainian Russian speakers’ demands for the minority rights guaranteed to them by both the pre-coup Ukrainian constitution and the principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). NATO backed Kyiv against Moscow. An escalating civil war among Ukrainians ensued. This soon evolved into an intensifying proxy war in Ukraine between the United States, NATO, and Russia.
Negotiations at Minsk, mediated by the OSCE with French and German support, brokered agreement between Kyiv and Moscow on a package of measures, including:
a ceasefire,
the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line,
the release of prisoners of war,
constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas, and
the restoration of Kyiv’s control of the rebel areas’ borders with Russia.
The United Nations Security Council endorsed these terms. They represented Moscow’s acceptance that Russian-speaking provinces in Ukraine would remain part of a united but federalized Ukraine, provided they enjoyed Québec-style linguistic autonomy. But, with U.S. support, Ukraine refused to carry out what it had agreed to. Years later, the French and Germans admitted that their mediation efforts at Minsk had been a ruse directed at gaining time to arm Kyiv against Moscow and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (like his predecessor in office, Petro Poroshenko) confessed that he had never planned to implement the accords.
Moscow and NATO Enlargement
In 1990, in the context of German reunification, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and Russia’s abandonment of its politico-economic sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe, the West had several times somewhat slyly but solemnly promised not to fill the resulting strategic vacuum by expanding NATO into it. But as the 1990s proceeded, despite a lack of enthusiasm on the part of some other NATO members, the United States insisted on doing just that. NATO enlargement steadily erased the Eastern European cordon sanitaire of independent neutral states that successive governments in Moscow had considered essential to Russian security. As former members of the Warsaw Pact entered NATO, U.S. weaponry, troops, and bases appeared on their territory. In 2008, in a final move to extend the U.S. sphere of influence to Russia’s borders, Washington persuaded NATO to declare its intention to admit both Ukraine and Georgia as members.
The eastward deployment of U.S. forces placed ballistic missile defense launchers in both Romania and Poland. These were technically capable of rapid reconfiguration to mount short-range strikes on Moscow. Their deployment fueled Russian fears of a decapitating U.S. surprise attack. If Ukraine entered NATO and the U.S. made comparable deployments there, Russia would have only about five minutes’ warning of a strike on Moscow. NATO’s role in detaching Kosovo from Serbia and in U.S. regime-change and pacification operations in Afghanistan and Libya as well as its support of anti-Russian forces in Ukraine, had convinced Moscow that it could no longer dismiss NATO as a purely defensive alliance.
As early as 1994, successive Russian governments began to warn the U.S. and NATO that continued NATO expansion – especially to Ukraine and Georgia – would compel a forceful response. Washington was aware of Russian determination to do this from multiple sources, including reports from its ambassadors in Moscow. In February 2007. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, declared: “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion … represents a serious provocation … And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” On February 1, 2008, Ambassador Bill Burns, now the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), warned in a telegram from Moscow that, on this subject Russians were united and serious. Burns felt so strongly about the consequences of NATO expansion into Ukraine that he gave his cable the subject line, “Nyet Means Nyet” [“No means no.”]
In April 2008, NATO nonetheless invited both Ukraine and Georgia to join it. Moscow protested that their “membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.” By August 2008, as if to underscore this point, when an emboldened Georgia sought to extend its rule to rebellious minority regions on the Russian border, Moscow went to war to consolidate their independence.
Civil and Proxy War in Ukraine
Less than a day after of the US-engineered coup that installed an anti-Russian regime in Kyiv in 2014, Washington formally recognized the new regime. When Russia then annexed Crimea and civil war broke out with Ukraine’s Russian speakers, the United States sided with and armed the Ukrainian ultranationalists whose policies had alienated Crimea and provoked the Russian-speaking secessionists. The United States and NATO began a multi-billion-dollar effort to reorganize, retrain, and re-equip Kyiv’s armed forces. The avowed purpose was to enable Kyiv to reconquer the Donbas and eventually Crimea. Ukraine’s regular army was then decrepit. Kyiv’s initial attacks on Russian speakers in the Ukrainian eastern and southern regions were largely conducted by ultranationalist militias.[4] By 2015, Russian soldiers were fighting alongside the Donbas rebels. An undeclared US/NATO proxy war with Russia had begun.
Over the course of the next eight years – during which the Ukrainian civil war continued – Kyiv built a NATO-trained army of 700,000 – not counting one million reserves – and hardened it in battle with Russian-supported separatists. Ukrainian regulars numbered only slightly less than Russia’s then 830,000 active-duty military personnel. In eight years, Ukraine had acquired a larger force than any NATO member other than the United States or Türkiye, outnumbering the armed forces of Britain, France, and Germany combined. Not surprisingly, Russia saw this as a threat.
Meanwhile, as tensions with Russia escalated, in early 2019 the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty, which had barred ground-launched missiles with ranges of up to 3,420 miles from deployment in Europe. Russia condemned this as a “destructive” act that would stoke security risks. Despite ongoing misgivings on the part of some other NATO members, at American insistence, NATO continued periodically to reiterate its offer to incorporate Ukraine as a member, doing so once more on September 1, 2021. By that time, after billions of dollars of U.S. training and arms transfers, Kyiv judged it was finally ready to crush its Russian speakers’ rebellion and their Russian allies. As 2021 ended, Ukraine stepped up pressure on the Donbas separatists and deployed forces to mount a major offensive against them timed for early 2022.
Moscow Demands Negotiations
At about the same time, in mid-December 2021, twenty-eight years after Moscow’s first warning to Washington, Vladimir Putin issued a formal demand for written security guarantees to reduce the apparent threats to Russia from NATO enlargement by restoring Ukrainian neutrality, banning the stationing of U.S. forces on Russia’s borders, and reinstating limits on the deployment of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in Europe. The Russian foreign ministry then presented a draft treaty to Washington incorporating these terms – which echoed similar demands put forward by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1997. At the same time, apparently both to underscore Moscow’s seriousness and to counter Kyiv’s planned offensive against the Donbas secessionists, Russia massed troops along its borders with Ukraine.
On January 26, 2022, the U.S. formally responded that neither it nor NATO would agree to negotiate Ukrainian neutrality or other such issues with Russia. A few days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov laid out his understanding of the American and NATO positions at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council as follows:
“[Our] Western colleagues are not prepared to take up our major proposals, primarily those on NATO’s eastward non-expansion. This demand was rejected with reference to the bloc’s so-called open-door policy and the freedom of each state to choose its own way of ensuring security. Neither the United States, nor [NATO] … proposed an alternative to this key provision.”
Moscow wanted negotiations but, in their absence, was prepared to go to war to remove the threats to which it objected. Washington knew this when it rejected talks with Moscow. The American refusal to talk was an unambiguous decision to accept the risk of war rather than explore any compromise or accommodation with Russia. U.S. and allied intelligence services immediately began releasing information purporting to describe impending Russian military operations[5] in what they described as an attempt to deter them.
Russia Invades Ukraine
In mid-February, fighting between Ukrainian army and secessionist forces in Donbas intensified, with OSCE observers reporting a rapid rise in ceasefire violations by both sides but with most allegedly initiated by Kyiv. Perhaps disingenuously, the Donbas secessionists appealed to Moscow to protect them and ordered a general evacuation of civilians to safe havens in Russia. On February 21, Russian President Putin recognized the independence of the two Donbas “people’s republics” and ordered Russian forces to secure them against Ukrainian attacks.
On February 24, 2022, in an address to the Russian nation, Putin declared that “Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine” and announced that he had ordered what he called a “special military operation” “to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide . . . for the last eight years” and to “strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” He added that:
“It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.”
The official narrative put forward in U.S. and NATO information warfare against Russia contradicts every element of this statement by President Putin, but the record affirms it.
The Run-up to the U.S.-Russian Proxy War in Ukraine
In the post-Soviet era:
NATO – the U.S. sphere of influence and military presence in Europe – constantly expanded toward Russia’s borders despite escalating Russian warnings and protests.
By contrast, Moscow was in constant retreat. It had abandoned its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. It made no effort to reestablish it.
Moscow repeatedly warned that NATO enlargement and U.S. forward deployment of forces that might threaten it, especially from Ukraine, were a grave threat to it to which it would feel compelled to react.
Given NATO’s transformation from a purely defensive, Europe-focused alliance into an instrument for power projection in support of U.S. regime-change and other military operations beyond its members’ borders, Moscow had a reasonable basis for concern that Ukrainian membership in NATO would pose an active threat to its security. This threat was underscored by U.S. withdrawal from the treaty that had prevented it from stationing intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, including in Ukraine.
Moscow consistently demanded neutrality for Ukraine. Neutrality would make Ukraine both a buffer and bridge between itself and the rest of Europe, rather than part of Russia or a platform for Russian power projection against the rest of Europe.
By contrast, the United States sought to make Ukraine a member of NATO – part of its sphere of influence – and a platform for the deployment of U.S. military power against Russia.
Moscow agreed at Minsk to respect continued Ukrainian sovereignty in the Donbas region, provided the rights of Russian speakers there were guaranteed. But, with support from the U.S. and NATO, Ukraine declined to implement the Minsk agreement and redoubled its effort to subjugate the Donbas.
When Washington refused to hear the Russian case for mutual accommodation in Europe and instead insisted on Ukrainian membership in NATO, the U.S. government knew that this would produce a Russian military response. In fact, Washington publicly predicted this.
Early in the resulting war, when third-party mediation achieved a draft peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, the West – represented by the British – insisted that Ukraine repudiate it.
This sad incident brings me to the war aims of the participants in the war.
War Aims in Ukraine
Kyiv has not wavered from its objectives of:
Forging a purely Ukrainian national identity from which Russian and other languages, cultures, and religious authorities are excluded.
Subjugating the Russian speakers who rebelled in response to this attempt at their forced assimilation.
Obtaining U.S. and NATO protection and integrating with the EU.
Reconquering the Russian-speaking territories Moscow has illegally annexed from Ukraine, including both the Donbas oblasts and Crimea.
Moscow clearly stated its maximum and minimum objectives in the draft treaty that it presented to Washington on December 17, 2021. Core Russian interests have been and remain:
(1) to deny Ukraine to the American sphere of influence that has engulfed the rest of Eastern Europe by compelling Ukraine to affirm neutrality between the United States / NATO and Russia, and
(2) to protect and ensure the basic rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine.
Washington’s objectives – which NATO has dutifully adopted as its own – have been much more open-ended and unspecific. As National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan put it in June 2022,
“We have . . . refrained from laying out what we see as an endgame. . .. We have been focused on what we can do today, tomorrow, next week to strengthen the Ukrainians’ hand to the maximum extent possible, first on the battlefield and then ultimately at the negotiating table.”
Inasmuch as the first principle of warfare is to establish realistic objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and a plan for war termination, this is a perfect description of how to brew up a “forever war.” As Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and Yemen attest, this has become the established American way of war. No clear objectives, no plan to achieve them, and no concept of how to end the war, on what terms, and with whom.
The most cogent statement of U.S. objectives in this war was offered by President Biden as it began. He said his goal with Russia was to “sap its economic strength and weaken its military for years to come” – whatever it takes. At no point has the United States government or NATO declared that the protection of Ukraine or Ukrainians, as opposed to exploiting their bravery to take down Russia, is the central American objective. In April 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reiterated that U.S. aid to Ukraine was intended to weaken and isolate Russia and thereby deprive it of any credible capacity to make war in future. Quite a few American politicians and pundits have extolled the benefits to having Ukrainians rather than Americans sacrifice their lives for this purpose. Some have gone farther and advocated the breakup of the Russian Federation as a war aim. If you are Russian, you don’t have to be paranoid to see such threats as existential. Russian President Putin assesses U.S. war aims as directed at humbling the Russian Federation strategically and, if possible, overthrowing its government, and dismembering it.[6] The United States has not disputed this assessment.
Peace Set Aside
In mid-March 2022, the government of Turkey and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett mediated between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, who tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement. The agreement provided that Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries. A meeting between Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky was in the process of being arranged to finalize this agreement, which the negotiators had initialed ad referendum – meaning subject to the approval of their superiors.
On March 28, 2022. President Zelensky publicly affirmed that Ukraine was ready for neutrality combined with security guarantees as part of a peace agreement with Russia. But on April 9 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kyiv. During this visit, he reportedly urged Zelensky not to meet Putin because (1) Putin was a war criminal and weaker than he seemed. He should and could be crushed rather than accommodated; and (2) even if Ukraine was ready to end the war, NATO was not.
Zelensky’s proposed meeting with Putin was then called off. Putin declared that talks with Ukraine had come to a dead end. Zelensky explained that “Moscow would like to have one treaty that would resolve all the issues. However, not everyone sees themselves at the table with Russia. For them, security guarantees for Ukraine is one issue, and the agreement with the Russian Federation is another issue.” This marked the end of bilateral Russian-Ukrainian negotiations and thus of any prospect of a resolution of the conflict anywhere but on the battlefield.
What Happened and Who’s Winning What
This war was born in and has been continued due to miscalculations by all sides. NATO expansion was legal but predictably provocative. Russia’s response was entirely predictable, if illegal, and has proven very costly to it. Ukraine’s de facto military integration into NATO has resulted in its devastation.
The United States calculated that Russian threats to go to war over Ukrainian neutrality were bluffs that might be deterred by outlining and denigrating Russian plans and intentions as Washington understood them. Russia assumed that the United States would prefer negotiations to war and would wish to avoid the redivision of Europe into hostile blocs. Ukrainians counted on the West protecting their country. When Russian performance in the first months of the war proved lackluster, the West concluded that Ukraine could defeat it. None of these calculations have proved correct.
Nevertheless, official propaganda, amplified by subservient mainstream and social media, has convinced most in the West that rejecting negotiations on NATO expansion and encouraging Ukraine to fight Russia is somehow “pro-Ukrainian.” Sympathy for the Ukrainian war effort is entirely understandable, but, as the Vietnam War should have taught us, democracies lose when cheerleading replaces objectivity in reporting and governments prefer their own propaganda to the truth of what is happening on the battleground.
The only way you can judge the success or failure of policies is by reference to the objectives they were designed to achieve. So, how are the participants in the Ukraine War doing in terms of achieving their objectives?
Let’s start with Ukraine.
From 2014 to 2022, the civil war in Donbas took nearly 15,000 lives. How many have been killed in action since the US/NATO-Russian proxy war began in February 2022 is unknown but is certainly in the several hundreds of thousands. Casualty numbers have been concealed by unprecedentedly intense information warfare. The only information in the West about the dead and wounded has been propaganda from Kyiv claiming vast numbers of Russian dead while revealing nothing at all about Ukrainian casualties. It is known, however, that ten percent of Ukrainians are now involved with the armed forces and 78 percent have relatives or friends who have been killed or wounded. An estimated 50,000 Ukrainians are now amputees. (By comparison, only 41,000 Britons had to have amputations in World War I, when the procedure was often the only one available to prevent death. Fewer than 2,000 U.S. veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions had amputations.) Most observers believe that Ukrainian forces have taken much heavier losses than their Russian enemies and that hundreds of thousands of them have given their lives in their country’s defense and efforts to retake territory occupied by the Russians.
When the war began, Ukraine had a population of about thirty-one million. The country has since lost at least one-third of its people. Over six million have taken refuge in the West. Two million more have left for Russia. Another eight million Ukrainians have been driven from their homes but remain in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s infrastructure, industries, and cities have been devastated and its economy destroyed. As is usual in wars, corruption – long a prominent feature of Ukrainian politics – has been rampant. Ukraine’s nascent democracy is no more, with all opposition parties, uncontrolled media outlets, and dissent outlawed.
On the other hand, Russian aggression has united Ukrainians, including many who are Russian speaking, to an extent never seen before. Moscow has thereby inadvertently reinforced the separate Ukrainian identity that both Russian mythology and President Putin have sought to deny. What Ukraine has lost in territory it has gained in patriotic cohesion based on passionate opposition to Moscow.
The flip side of this is that Ukraine’s Russian-speaking separatists have also had their Russian identity reinforced. Ukrainian refugees in Russia are the hardest of hardliners demanding retribution from Kyiv. There is now little to no possibility of Russian speakers accepting a status in a united Ukraine, as would have been the case under the Minsk Accords. And, with the failure of Ukraine’s “counteroffensive,” it is very unlikely that Donbas or Crimea will ever return to Ukrainian sovereignty. As the war continues, Ukraine may well lose still more territory, including its access to the Black Sea. What has been lost on the battlefield and in the hearts of the people cannot be regained at the negotiating table. Ukraine will emerge from this war maimed, crippled, and much reduced in both territory and population.
Finally, there is now no realistic prospect of Ukrainian membership in NATO. As NSC Advisor Sullivan has said, “everyone needs to look squarely at the fact” that allowing Ukraine to join NATO at this point “means war with Russia.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has stated that the prerequisite for Ukrainian membership in NATO is a peace treaty between it and Russia. No such treaty is anywhere in sight. In continuing to insist that Ukraine will become a NATO member once the war is concluded, the West has perversely incentivized Russia not to agree to end the war. But, in the end, Ukraine will have to make its peace with Russia, almost certainly largely on Russian terms.
Whatever else the war may be achieving, it has not been good for Ukraine. Ukraine’s bargaining position vis-à-vis Russia has been greatly weakened. But then, Kyiv’s fate has always been an afterthought in U.S. policy circles. Washington has instead sought to exploit Ukrainian courage to thrash Russia, reinvigorate NATO, and reinforce U.S. primacy in Europe. And it has not spent any time at all thinking about how to restore peace to Europe.
How about Russia?
Has it succeeded in expelling American influence from Ukraine, forced Kyiv to declare neutrality, or reinstating the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine? Clearly not.
For now, at least, Ukraine has become a complete dependency of the United States and its NATO allies. Kyiv is an embittered, long-term antagonist of Moscow. Kyiv clings to its ambition to join NATO. Russians in Ukraine are the targets of the local version of cancel culture. Whatever the outcome of the war, mutual animosity has erased the Russian myth of Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood based on a common origin in Kievan Rus. Russia has had to abandon three centuries of efforts to identify with Europe and instead pivot to China, India, the Islamic world, and Africa. Reconciliation with a seriously alienated European Union will not come easily, if at all. Russia may not have lost on the battlefield or been weakened or strategically isolated, but it has incurred huge opportunity costs.
Then, too, NATO has expanded to include Finland and Sweden. This does not change the military balance in Europe. Western portrayal of Russia as inherently predatory notwithstanding, Moscow has had neither the desire nor the capability to attack either of these two formerly very Western-aligned and formidably armed but nominally “neutral” states. Nor does either Finland or Sweden have any intention of joining an unprovoked attack on Russia. But their decision to join NATO is politically wounding for Moscow.
Since the West shows no willingness to accommodate Russian security concerns, if Moscow is to achieve its goals, it now has no apparent alternative to battling on. As it does so, it is stimulating European determination to meet previously ignored NATO targets for defense spending and to acquire self-reliant military capabilities directed at countering Russia independently of those of the United States. Poland is reemerging as a powerful hostile force on Russia’s borders. These trends are changing the European military balance to Moscow’s long-term disadvantage.
What about the United States?
In 2022 alone the United States approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine. The Russian defense budget then was then less than half of that — $54 billion. It has since roughly doubled. Russian defense industries have been revitalized. Some now produce more weaponry in a month than they previously did in a year. Russia’s autarkic economy has weathered 18 months of all-out war against it from both the U.S. and the EU. It just overtook Germany to become the fifth wealthiest economy in the world and the largest in Europe in terms of purchasing power parity. Despite repeated Western claims that Russia was running out of ammunition and losing the war of attrition in Ukraine, it has not, while the West has. Ukrainian bravery, which has been hugely impressive, has been no match for Russian firepower.
Meanwhile, the alleged Russian threat to the West, once a powerful argument for NATO unity, has lost credibility. Russia’s armed forces have proven unable to conquer Ukraine, still less the rest of Europe. But the war has taught Russia how to counter and overcome much of the most advanced weaponry of the United States and other Western countries.
Before the United States and NATO rejected negotiations, Russia was prepared to accept a neutral and federalized Ukraine. In the opening phase of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia reaffirmed this willingness in a draft peace treaty with Ukraine which the United States and NATO blocked Kyiv from signing. Western diplomatic intransigence has failed to persuade Moscow to accommodate Ukrainian nationalism or accept Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO and the American sphere of influence in Europe. The proxy war seems instead to have convinced Moscow that it must gut Ukraine, keep the Ukrainian territories it has illegally annexed, and likely add more, thus ensuring that Ukraine is a dysfunctional state unable either to join NATO or to fulfill the ultranationalist, anti-Russian vision of its World War II neo-Nazi hero, Stepan Bandera.
The war has led to the superficial unity of NATO but there are obvious fissures among members. The sanctions imposed on Russia have done heavy damage to European economies. Without Russian energy supplies, some European industries are no longer internationally competitive. As NATO’s recent summit at Vilnius showed, member countries differ on the desirability of admitting Ukraine. NATO unity seems unlikely to outlast the war. These realities help explain why most of America’s European partners want to end the war as soon as possible.
The Ukraine War has clearly put paid to the post-Soviet era in Europe, but it has not made Europe in any respect more secure. It has not enhanced America’s international reputation or consolidated U.S. primacy. The war has instead accelerated the emergence of a post-American multi-polar world order. One feature of this is an anti-American axis between Russia and China.
To weaken Russia, the United States has resorted to unprecedentedly intrusive unilateral sanctions, including secondary sanctions targeting normal arms-length commercial activity that does not involve a U.S. nexus and is legal in the jurisdictions of the transacting parties. Washington has been actively blocking trade between countries that have nothing to do with Ukraine or the war there because they won’t jump on the U.S. bandwagon. As a result, much of the world is now engaged in pursuit of financial and supply-chain linkages that are independent of U.S. control. This includes intensified international efforts to end dollar hegemony, which is the basis for U.S. global primacy. Should these efforts succeed, the United States will no longer be able to run the trade and balance of payments deficits that sustain its current standard of living and status as the most powerful society on the planet.
Washington’s use of political and economic pressure to compel other countries to conform to its anti-Russian and anti-Chinese policies has clearly backfired. It has encouraged even former U.S. client states to search for ways to avoid entanglement in future American conflicts and proxy wars they do not support, like that in Ukraine. To this end, they are abandoning exclusive reliance on the United States and forging ties to multiple economic and politico-military partners. Far from isolating Russia or China, America’s coercive diplomacy has helped both Moscow and Beijing to enhance relationships in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that reduce U.S. influence in favor of their own.
To summarize:
In short, U.S. policy has resulted in great suffering in Ukraine and escalating defense budgets here and in Europe but has failed to weaken or isolate Russia. More of the same will not accomplish either of these oft-stated American objectives. Russia has been educated in how to combat American weapons systems and has developed effective counters to them. It has been militarily strengthened, not weakened. It has been reoriented and freed from Western influence, not isolated.
If the purpose of war is to establish a better peace, this war is not doing that. Ukraine is being eviscerated on the altar of Russophobia. At this point, no one can confidently predict how much of Ukraine or how many Ukrainians will be left when the fighting stops or when and how to stop it. Kyiv just failed to meet more than a fraction of its recruitment goals. Combating Russia to the last Ukrainian was always an odious strategy. But when NATO is about to run out of Ukrainians, it is not just cynical; it is no longer a viable option.
Lessons to be Learned from the Ukraine War
What can we learn from this debacle? It has provided many unwelcome reminders of the basic principles of statecraft.
Wars do not decide who is right. They determine who is left.
The best way to avoid war is to reduce or eliminate the apprehensions and grievances that cause it.
When you refuse to hear, let alone address an aggrieved party’s case for adjustments in your policies toward it, you risk a violent reaction from it.
No one should enter a war without realistic objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and a plan for war termination.
Self-righteousness and bravery are no substitutes for military mass, firepower, and stamina.
In the end, wars are won and lost on the battlefield, not with propaganda inspired by and directed at reinforcing wishful thinking.
What has been lost on the battlefield can seldom, if ever, be recovered at the negotiating table.
When wars cannot be won, it is usually better to seek terms by which to end them than to reinforce strategic failure.
It is time to prioritize saving as much as possible of Ukraine. This war has become existential for it. Ukraine needs diplomatic backing to craft a peace with Russia if its military sacrifices are not to have been in vain. It is being destroyed. It must be rebuilt. The key to preserving Ukraine is to empower and back Kyiv to end the war on the best terms it can obtain, to facilitate the return of its refugees, and to use the EU accession process to advance liberal reforms and institute clean government in a neutral Ukraine.
Unfortunately, as things stand, both Moscow and Washington seem determined to persist in Ukraine’s ongoing destruction. But whatever the outcome of the war, Kyiv and Moscow will eventually have to find a basis for coexistence. Washington needs to support Kyiv in challenging Russia to recognize both the wisdom and the necessity of respect for Ukrainian neutrality and territorial integrity.
Finally, this war should provoke some sober rethinking here, in Moscow, and by NATO of the consequences of diplomacy-free, militarized foreign policy. Had the United States agreed to talk with Moscow, even if it had continued to reject much of what Moscow demanded, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine as it did. Had the West not intervened to prevent Ukraine from ratifying the treaty others helped it agree with Russia at the outset of the war, Ukraine would now be intact and at peace.
This war did not need to take place. Every party to it has lost far more than it has gained. There’s a lot to be learned from what has happened in and to Ukraine. We should study and learn these lessons and take them to heart.
[2] Ukraine contributed troops to this NATO operation despite not being a member of the alliance.
[3] Reportedly, by 2014, various agencies of the U.S. government had committed a cumulative total of $5 billion or more to political subsidies and education in support of regime change in Ukraine.
[4] Prior to the U.S. and NATO decision to aid Ukraine against its Russian-backed separatists, these militias were commonly identified as neo-Nazi in the Western media. They professed to be followers of Stepan Bandera – who has now been adopted as a revered national figure by Kyiv. Bandera was famous for his extreme Ukrainian nationalism, fascism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and violence. He and his followers were allegedly responsible for massacring 50,000 – 100,000 Poles and for collaborating with the Nazis in the murder of an even larger number of Jews. After the US/NATO proxy war broke out, despite their continuing display of Nazi regalia and symbols on their uniforms and their ties to neo-Nazi groups in other countries, Western media ceased to characterize these militias as neo-Nazis.
[5] The “special military operation’ mounted by Russia bore little resemblance to the specific predictions put forward in this information warfare, which appears have been designed as much to rally support for Ukraine and boost its morale as to deter Russia.
[6] See, e.g., https://jamestown.org/event/watch-the-video-preparing-for-the-dissolution-of-the-russian-federation/
