“This is getting ridiculous,” an unnamed NATO diplomat was reported to say, “the Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”
The outburst came after the Ukrainian government denied consensus NATO and American opinion that it had goofed up and misfired a missile into the territory of one of its biggest backers, killing two. It would have been noble to admit the mistake outright and show some remorse, and the incident would have been unlikely to be held against Ukraine. After all, it is the one facing an invasion, and friendly fire incidents happen in a saturated theatre even with the best militaries, even with top-tier deconfliction processes in place.
The most responsible behavior in the incident came from Poland, the country struck by the missile. Warsaw stated that an investigation was underway, and then called NATO to discuss the apparent “attack.” Once it was beyond a reasonable doubt that the strike wasn’t from Russia, Poland withdrew its Article 4 request.
But for about fourteen hours, the threat of nuclear war loomed large over the Euro-Atlantic. The claim that a Russian missile had flown into Poland hinged on the words of a lone anonymous “senior intelligence official,” amplified first by the Associated Press and then by lobbyists masquerading as national security experts. Its spread was recklessly fuelled by the Baltic states and Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president said it was time for a serious NATO countermeasure. The Ukrainian foreign minister channelled his inner girl-boss and said it was a “conspiracy theory” to say that Poland was hit by Ukrainian air defences. Ukrainian M.P. Lesia Vasylenko tweeted, “2 #russia missiles fly over #Ukraine #Polish border. Hits of polish territory and so far 2 possible civilian casualties. This calls for @NATO article 5 reaction. Right?” Then, as the narrative collapsed in real time, tweeted again, “This is #russia’s fault! If #putin hadn’t gone crazy with a missile shower over #Ukraine yesterday, there would be no hits. In #Kyiv, #Kharkiv or #Przewodow”.
The BBC reported, “Baltic states on the front line with Russia were quick to call on the collective defence of Nato. The President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda declared on Twitter: “Every inch of NATO territory must be defended!” Others said the incident made the case for even greater military support for Ukraine. Latvia’s defence minister, Artis Pabriks, suggested NATO could provide more air defenses for Poland and “part of the territory of Ukraine.” Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s prime minister, said the West should give Ukraine more military, humanitarian, and financial support.
Put simply, a whole bunch of people called for direct war between the two largest nuclear powers, all for their petty localized interests.
Now that there is a consensus that the incident was a stray Ukrainian missile, it seems highly improbable that the Ukrainian government and some of their lobbyists in D.C. didn’t know that. It is almost impossible to conceive that a leader of a country at war had not received the frontline information from his battlefield command about the trajectory of the misfired border air-defense missile around the same time that he and his government were making statements about the urgency of NATO imposing collective defense.
In the parlance of D.C., it appears a clear case of deliberate “disinformation.” It is, quite frankly, unlikely that the Ukrainian government and military did not know that they were calling for what would have effectively amounted to a world war. Every sane military strategist knows the meaning of Article 5. The NATO states know that. The Baltic states should know that. Frustrated American intelligence and administration officials, trapped by their earlier Churchillian rhetoric, know that, at least by now. And yet.
A still contested puzzle in international relations is whether great powers influence their satellites or whether ideological small states drag (or “chain-gang”) their witless and myopic benefactors. As Schumpeter wrote, “there was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Roman allies…”
From a Machiavellian standpoint, one can understand why Ukrainian leadership would lie to the world to get everyone else to fight their war, even at the risk of nuclear annihilation. Deception is often more effective than force. Fidel Castro also tried to drag the Soviets into his war, but the Soviets were prudential enough to leash their dogs.
One would expect rational small states to zealously guard whatever small influence they have, instead of undermining the core interest of the group that protects their existence. So, what explains Baltic fanaticism about NATO enlargement or brinkmanship with Russia? What explains Ukrainian resistance to any grand bargain, to the point of antagonizing their allies? Whatever the result of a total war they seek so ardently, they would not survive one as an intact unit of polity anyway. So, what gives? There are potentially two causes, by no means exclusive, and possibly intertwined.
One, this is ideological. Historically, a simple hypothesis is often correct. But two—and here it gets more complicated—the bigger the alliance, the more constrained the choices of the hegemon. Expanding NATO consolidates the liberal-internationalist orthodoxy and multiplies an imperial, self-sustaining, and expanding bureaucracy, making it more difficult for a hegemon like the U.S. to act in its own interests as opposed to the interests of the group. No great power or empire in history has been this trapped by its own ideological overreach. Fenrir, in this case, is not only chained, but has proceeded to neuter himself.
NATO did not and would not do anything without the permission of Washington, D.C., but this episode presents an opportunity to contemplate and reconsider some peripheral alliance commitments, and the risk of resultant escalatory spirals. Next time the world might not be so lucky.
Note: The National Security Council was created as a result of the 1947 National Security Act, which also created an unaccountable agency known as the CIA. Emphasis in article below is from the original. – Natylie
“It means our response to the Covid pandemic was led by groups and agencies that are in the business of responding to wars and terrorist threats, not public health crises or disease outbreaks.“
As of March 13, 2020 the National Security Council (NSC) was officially in charge of the US government’s Covid policy.
Starting on March 18, 2020, The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was officially in charge of the US government’s Covid response.
The Covid Task Force Coordinator was brought in by the NSC
On March 11, 2020, at a Heritage Foundation Talk, Trump’s National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien, when discussing what the White House and NSC were doing about the virus, said:
“We brought into the White House Debi Birx, a fantastic physician and ambassador from the State Department. We appreciate Secretary Pompeo immediately moving her over to the White House at our, well at the President’s, request.” (min. 21:43 – 21:56)
The National Security Council was in charge of our Covid Policy
An astonishing government document dated March 13, 2020 entitled: “PanCAP AdaptedU.S. Government COVID-19 Response Plan” (PanCAP-A)(embedded at the end of this piece) reveals that United States policy in response to SARS-CoV-2 was set not by the public health agencies designated in pandemic preparedness protocols (Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act, PPD-44, BIA), but rather by the National Security Council, or NSC.
This is the pandemic response org chart, from p. 9 of PanCAP-A, showing the NSC solely responsible for Covid policy:
What is the National Security Council?
According to its website, the NSC “is the President’s principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his or her senior advisors and cabinet officials.”
The NSC does not include as regular attendees any representatives from public health-related agencies.
It does include the President’s National Security Advisor, who is “the President’s most important source of policy advice on foreign and national security policy,” according to the White House Transition Project’s document for The National Security Advisor and Staff. “In some administrations,” the document continues, “foreign and national security policy making is essentially centralized in the hands of the NSC advisor with minimal input from cabinet-level departments such as State or Defense.” Furthermore, “there is little statutory or legal constraint (beyond budgetary limits) in how the role of NSC advisor is defined or how the NSC staff is organized and operates.” (pp. 1-2)
In other words, if the NSC is in charge of Covid response, it can pretty much decide and impose anything it wants without any constraints or oversight, as long as the President agrees, or at least lets them take the lead.
But what exactly is PanCAP-A, in which the NSC appears in such a surprising Covid-response leadership role?
PanCAP-A is the closest we have to a national Covid response plan
PanCAP-A stands for Pandemic Crisis Action Plan – Adapted.
An exhaustive online search did not turn up the Pandemic Crisis Action Plan from 2018, which was apparently “adapted” to produce PanCAP-A. However, the existence of the original document is confirmed in various documents, including a statement on “Preparedness for COVID-19” presented to the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs on April 14, 2021.
In this statement, Elizabeth Zimmerman, a former FEMA Administrator, who is sharing with the Senate Committee her findings on “The Initial Pandemic Response and Lessons Learned,” says she had trouble finding the government’s plan for the US response to Covid-19:
“In researching disaster response plans to refresh my memory for this hearing, I found several detailed plans that were publicly available and saw mention of plans and directives that were not publicly available. The time spent searching for these plans and directives was frustrating for an experienced emergency manager…”
Then, in reference to the plans she was able to find, or knew about but may not have actually seen, she says:
“Following the Anthrax attacks in 2001, the federal government invested a lot of money on processes and plans centered on public health response – bioterrorism and pandemics in particular. … One of the latest plans, January 2017, is the Biological Incident Annex (BIA) to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans (FIOPs). The BIA is the federal organizing framework for responding and recovering from a range of biological threats, including pandemics.
However, it was not publicly seen that these plans were being used during the onset of COVID-19 nor does it seem that there was a national COVID-19 response plan.
Finally, she references the 2018 PanCAP, the adapted PanCAP, and then makes another surprising statement:
Also, there was a 2018 Pandemic Crisis Action Plan (PanCAP) that was customized for COVID-19 specifically and adopted in March 2020 by HHS and FEMA; the plan identified the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) with FEMA supporting for coordination. However, a mere five days after the national COVID-19 emergency was announced, FEMA became the LFA.” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
FEMA replaced HHS as the Lead Federal Agency, with no warning or preparation
What Zimmerman is saying here is that, in the PanCAP-A org chart, where the NSC is in charge of policy and the HHS is in charge of almost everything else – actually, FEMA is in charge of everything else.
This means that, in effect, starting on March 18, 2020, the HHS –which comprises the CDC, NIAID, NIH and other public-health-related agencies – had NO OFFICIAL LEADERSHIP ROLE in pandemic response – not in determining policy and not in implementing policy.
This is a staggering piece of information, considering that all pandemic preparedness plans, as Zimmerman notes, placed the Health and Human Services Agency (HHS) at the helm of pandemic response.
How was FEMA put in charge?
According to the Stafford Act, which “constitutes the statutory authority for most Federal disaster response activities especially as they pertain to FEMA and FEMA programs,” the disasters to which FEMA is empowered to respond include:
“any natural catastrophe (including any hurricane, tornado, storm, high water, winddriven water, tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide, mudslide, snowstorm, or drought), or, regardless of cause, any fire, flood, or explosion, in any part of the United States, which in the determination of the President causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance under this Act to supplement the efforts and available resources of States, local governments, and disaster relief organizations in alleviating the damage, loss, hardship, or suffering caused thereby.”
Very clearly, FEMA is an agency neither designed nor intended to lead public health initiatives or the country’s response to disease outbreaks.
Yet, as Zimmerman reported, on March 18, 2020, just five days after the official date of PanCAP-A, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was removed from its lead role in pandemic response, and FEMA was (at least operationally if not policy-wise) put in charge.
In a Congressional Research Service report from February 2022, entitled “FEMA’s Role in the COVID-19 Federal Pandemic Response,” the opening paragraph states:
“On March 13, 2020, President Donald J. Trump declared a nationwide emergency under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (the Stafford Act, P.L. 93-288 as amended), authorizing assistance administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Five days later, the President notified then-FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor that the agency would assume leadership of the federal pandemic response effort—the first known instance of FEMA serving in such a role for a public health incident.”
“The agency’s response to COVID-19 has been unprecedented. When the White House directed FEMA to lead operations, COVID-19 became the first national pandemic response that FEMA has led since the agency was established in 1979. It was also the first time in U.S. history the President has declared a nationwide emergency under Section 501b of the Stafford Act and authorized Major Disaster Declarations for all states and territories for the same incident.” (p. 5)
A FEMA fact sheet from March 4, 2020 reveals that the agency was not given advanced warning of the enormous new responsibilities that would be thrust upon it just two weeks later:
“At this time, FEMA is not preparing an emergency declaration in addition to the Public Health Emergency declared by HHS on January 31, 2020.” (p. 2)
The table below is from a September 2021 report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Homeland Security, “Lessons Learned from FEMA’s Initial Response to COVID-19.” This document stresses that “The PanCAP-A did not address the changes that ensued when FEMA was designated the LFA. Furthermore, FEMA (and HHS) did not update the PanCAP-A or issue interim guidance addressing the changes in critical roles and responsibilities for each agency.” (p. 11)
BIA=Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans, January 2017
In other words, HHS – the agency designated by statute and experience to handle public health crises – was removed, and FEMA – the agency designated by statute and experience to “help people before, during and after disasters” like earthquakes and fires – was put in charge. But the pandemic planning document was not updated to reflect that change or how that change would affect the Covid response.
Why was FEMA suddenly and unexpectedly given this lead role? I would argue that the NSC wanted to ensure that no policy or response initiative emanating from the public health departments would play any role in the Covid response. Since FEMA had no planning documents or policies regarding disease or pandemic outbreaks, there would be nothing in the way of whatever the NSC wanted to do.
So what did the NSC want to do? PanCAP-A, in which the NSC takes the lead role in setting Covid policy, does not give a detailed answer, but does clearly place NSC policy above anything else that might contradict it.
What does PanCAP-A say?
On p. 1, under “Purpose” it states:
“This plan outlines the United States Government (USG) coordinated federal response activities for COVID-19 in the United States (U.S.). The President appointed the Vice President to lead the USG effort with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) serving as the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) consistent with the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 44.”
In other words, in accordance with a bunch of pandemic preparedness laws and directives, the HHS is the Lead Federal Agency in charge of pandemic response.
As we move through the document, however, the roles and responsibilities of the HHS become increasingly muddled and diminished.
On p. 6 under “Senior Leader Intent” it says:
“The National Security Council (NSC) requested adaptation of the PanCAP to address the ongoing threat posed by COVID-19 in support of the Administration’s efforts to monitor, contain, and mitigate the spread of the virus. The plan builds on objectives that prepare the USG to implement broader community and healthcare-based mitigation measures…” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
In other words, everything the Pan-CAP-A says about how the HHS is planning to address the pandemic is “adapted” in favor of “objectives” that prepare the government to implement “broader measures.”
On the next page, we get the exact same vague language under “Strategic Objectives,” which include implementing “broader community and healthcare-based mitigation measures.” A footnote tells us “These objectives were directed by the NSC Resilience DRG PCC on February 24, 2020.” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
What is the NSC Resilience DRG PCC? There is no explanation, appendix, or addendum, nor anything in the entire PanCAP-A to answer this question – a noteworthy omission, since it apparently defines the objectives upon which the entire US pandemic response is based.
Similarly, on p. 8 under “Concept of Operations,” we read:
“This concept of operations aligns interagency triggers to the CDC intervals for each phase and groups key federal actions according to response phase. It also layers in the COVID-19 Containment and Mitigation Strategy developed by the NSC.” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
There is no explanation or description of what the “Containment and Mitigation Strategy developed by the NSC” is referring to.
Conclusion
Everything we thought we knew about the US government’s Covid response is upended in the Pandemic Crisis Action Plan – Adapted (PanCAP-A), which gave the NSC sole authority over policy, and the simultaneous Stafford Act declaration, which resulted in FEMA/DHS taking the lead role in its implementation.
This means the doctors on the White House Task Force who headed HHS departments – including Fauci, Redfield, and Collins, the heads of the CDC, NIAID and NIH – had no authority over determining or implementing Covid policy and were following the lead of the NSC and the DHS (Department of National Security), which is the department under which FEMA operates.
It means our response to the Covid pandemic was led by groups and agencies that are in the business of responding to wars and terrorist threats, not public health crises or disease outbreaks.
I believe that the national security authorities took control of the Covid pandemic response not just in the US but in many of our allied countries (the UK, Australia, Germany, Israel and others) because they knew SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered virus that leaked from a lab researching potential bioweapons.
Whether or not the “novel coronavirus” was in fact a highly lethal pathogen, it was a military threat because it was a potential bioweapon, and therefore it required a military-style response: strict lockdowns in anticipation of Warp Speed vaccine development.
Furthermore, all of the seemingly nonsensical and unscientific policies – including mask mandates, mass testing and quarantines, using case counts to determine severity – were imposed in the service of the singular goal of fomenting fear in order to induce public acquiescence with the lockdown-until-vaccines policy.
And once the national security authorities were in charge, the entire biodefense industrial complex, consisting of national security and intelligence operatives, propaganda/psy-op (psychological operations) departments, pharmaceutical companies and affiliated government officials and NGOs assumed leadership roles.
Much research is needed to unearth more evidence in support of these hypotheses. The work continues.
World Geostrategic Insights interview with Eric Denécé on an alleged totalitarianism of the Western media in presenting the war in Ukraine, the propaganda war machine set up by the Russians, Americans, and Ukrainians, and the prospects for an end to the conflict.
Eric Denécé, PhD, HDR, is the Director and Founder of the French Centre for Intelligence Studies (CF2R). During his career, he previously served as: Naval Intelligence Officer (analyst) within the Strategic Evaluation Division at the Secretariat Général de la Défense Nationale (SGDN); Sales Export Engineer of Matra Defense; Director for Corporate Communications of NAVFCO (French Naval Defence Industry Advisory Group); Founder and Managing Director of Argos Engineering and Consulting Ltd, a Competitive Intelligence consulting company.
Q1 – On Wikipedia, you are presented as “pro-Putin” and a “transmitter of his disinformation”. You are ostracized because of your statements on the war in Ukraine, such as “Responsibility for this appalling conflict is widely shared, and Ukrainian and Western provocations cannot be minimized or passed over in silence …. It is a conflict that should have been avoided and in which all actors involved, directly or indirectly, bear their share of responsibility.” Of course, your statements may be highly questionable, but it should be legitimate to express them. In this regard you also denounced that “the Western media have succeeded in establishing a real media totalitarianism, which aims to silence any dissenting voice, to prevent any criticism of Kiev, in particular by systematically passing off those who criticize its actions and those of the Americans as pro-Russian.” Have we really entered a totalitarianism of thought? Is freedom of expression, typical of western democracies, becoming a collateral casualty of war?
A1 – This is a very important issue. There is indeed in the presentation of this conflict, a real media totalitarianism of the West. As we observe every day, almost all the Western media and politicians have taken up the cause of Ukraine since 24 February 2022.
But in reality it started as early as the events of 2014 and the real coup that took place in Kiev against Yanukovych. While there was nothing respectable about this man and he was notoriously corrupt – even Vladimir Putin did not like him – he had been legitimately elected in an election supervised and validated by OSCE observers. Maidan is therefore the overthrow of a legal and legitimate regime with the support of Europe and the United States, less than a year before a new election that would have likely removed him from power. This illegal act led to Moscow’s reaction, which re-annexed Crimea to its territory. Similarly, it was Kiev’s discriminatory actions and then its military operations against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass that provoked the Russians to step in. To deny these facts is to subscribe to a Western narrative that totally distorts historical reality.
Similarly, if Russia clearly attacked Ukraine at the beginning of 2022, it did so following a long process of American provocations (refusal to suspend the extension of NATO to the East, refusal to negotiate with Moscow a new security architecture in Europe) and Ukrainian provocations (launching of the offensive in the Donbass on 17 February). Washington knew that Ukraine was a “red line” for the Russians and that they would react. The United States is therefore just as responsible for this conflict as Moscow.
Of course, when one says such things, one is immediately accused of being pro-Russian and of relaying Kremlin propaganda. This is the argument with which Western politicians and media disqualify all those who try to present a version of the facts much closer to reality than their propaganda.
However, I do not seek to defend Russia, but to produce an analysis as objective as possible of the situation in order to find ways out of the crisis. It also seems essential to me to alert the public opinion on the major manipulation of the information which we are witnessing because of the American and Ukrainian Spin Doctors. But the latter and their European relays (politicians, media, pro-Ukrainian activists) do not want this discourse to be audible and are energetically working to stifle it.
I was a young intelligence officer during the Cold War and I have no illusions about the totalitarian Soviet system against which we fought and which collapsed.
However, in the last thirty years, things have changed. Russia is no longer the USSR. Yet everything is done to ensure that we continue to analyze it through the old prism of the Cold War. Thus, it is necessary to note that for thirty years, the West has not ceased to scorn the Russians, to lie to them, to impose sanctions on them and to give them lessons in “democracy”, while not applying them itself.
The vocation of an intelligence officer is to describe the world as it is and not as he would like it to be. This is why we are often qualified as Cassandras and not listened to by politicians. I make this quote from Jean Jaurès (Discours à la jeunesse, 1903) my own:
“Courage is going for the ideal and understanding the real…Courage is seeking the truth and telling it. Courage is not to suffer the law of the triumphant lie that passes and not to echo, with our soul, our mouth and our hands, the imbecilic applause and the fanatical booing.”
The example of the Ukrainian crisis is a perfect illustration. I have no doubt that in the years or decades to come, history will show that this crisis was deliberately provoked by the United States to weaken Moscow and that the vassalized Europeans obediently followed them to the detriment of their own interests.
Q2 – War propaganda is the use of true or false information to manipulate public opinion and evoke strong emotional reactions, such as fear, anger, guilt, admiration or outrage. It has been used throughout history, and particularly since World War 1, as a key tool of warfare and is also widely used by both sides in the conflict in Ukraine. According to a widespread narrative, Russia has perfected and uses an aggressive propaganda and misinformation machine through media control, censorship, socials, trolls, etc. Less emphasis, however, is given to the Ukrainian side’s war propaganda, which seems to have been very effective in gaining Western support. What is your opinion on the information and disinformation warfare in the Ukrainian conflict and propaganda techniques used by the warring sides? While the final outcome on the battlefield still seems uncertain, can we say that there is already a winner in the propaganda war?
A2 – War propaganda actually has even older origins. Julius Caesar already used it in the first century BC; Catholics and Protestants made extensive use of it during the European wars of religion and Napoleon and his British adversaries understood its importance. However, it has developed considerably with the entry of our societies into the information age since the mid-1990s. While propaganda and disinformation were for a long time mainly the work of totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Soviet Union), they are now systematically practiced by the United States, which prefers to speak of “information warfare”. We could observe this during the first Gulf War (1991), the NATO aggression against Serbia (1999), the invasion of Iraq (2003) in violation of the UN Security Council decision, the interventions in Libya and Syria (2011) and finally, the Ukrainian crisis (2014 and 2022). There has been a shift in their use over the past thirty years: propaganda and disinformation are used as much – if not more – by Western “democracies” as by authoritarian regimes. The United States, having a great deal of control over the world’s means of communication – both the channels and their content – orient the presentation of facts to their advantage in order to achieve their political objectives.
Therefore, to say that today Russian propaganda is raging is to smile. While it is undeniable that Moscow seeks to present the facts to its advantage, its actions have nothing in common with the real information war machine implemented by the Americans and the Ukrainians. For the first time in history, “democracies” lie and misinform more than authoritarian regimes, whether we like it or not.
In particular, we assume – obviously wrongly – that everything the Russians say is a lie and must be systematically rejected, but that everything the Ukrainians say is the pure truth and cannot be questioned. This is abysmally bad faith, but its purpose is to prevent any diplomatic resolution of this conflict, because one does not negotiate with a demonized opponent.
No one sanctioned the United States for having caused the death of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants through inhumane sanctions to make Baghdad comply, nor for having invaded Iraq in 2003 despite the UN veto and for having created chaos in that country. Nobody criticizes them either for the numerous collateral victims caused by their indiscriminate military interventions in the name of the “war on terrorism”, nor for having legally re-established torture and for having engaged in it on a large scale with the help of their allies…
But paradoxically, the West blames the Russians for blocking the export of Ukrainian wheat – information that is not even confirmed. All this reminds of the parable of the straw and the beam…
Q3 – How do you think this conflict will end? Is there still room for a ceasefire and diplomatic solution, and under what conditions? Or, as you recently stated, “the folly of politicians will drag us into a nuclear war”?
A3 – For the moment, it is necessary to distinguish the situation of the four actors involved.
For the United States, which set this trap for Russia in the hope of destabilizing it quickly, it is a half-victory. Washington has not achieved its main goal, but it has succeeded in domesticating Western Europe and making it an appendage of NATO. In addition, the United States has succeeded in permanently weakening competing European economies and is in the process of wiping out the Old World’s defense industry. However, the economic situation on the other side of the Atlantic is also very difficult (inflation), which may well lead to the defeat of the war-mongering Democrats in the mid-term elections in early November.
For Russia, which knowingly fell into the trap set by Washington, this is also a half-victory. Militarily, its initial action was partly a failure and it did not manage to win a decisive victory over the Ukrainian forces. Moreover, it is now cut off from Europe. However, it is not weakened as the West had hoped. Its economy is holding up very well, its revenues are growing despite the sanctions, many countries are refusing to associate themselves with Western policy and its internal cohesion has not suffered. Moreover, its army is far from being in disarray and time is on its side in the theater of operations.
For the European states, it is a major defeat, which has increased their dependence and their submission to the United States. Obedient to the American diktat, the countries of the Union have imposed sanctions on Moscow which are having a severe impact on their economy. They are therefore clearly playing against their own interests. They no longer have any will of their own, and therefore no sovereignty. Worse, while putting forward their “democratic values”, they have not hesitated to flout them by signing an important gas partnership with Azerbaijan, a bloodthirsty dictatorship which has been demonstrating for years its will to exterminate the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and which has attacked the Republic of Armenia without any noticeable reaction from the international community.
For Ukraine, this is a total defeat. The country is in a deplorable state, its infrastructure is destroyed, many inhabitants have fled abroad, part of its territory is occupied and the number of deaths and injuries in combat is particularly high. However, let us remember that before the beginning of this conflict, Ukraine was already a failed quasi-state, undermined by corruption and criminality, led by elites who – like Zelensky and his entourage – have never stopped enriching themselves to the detriment of the country’s development and the well-being of its population since independence (1991). Playing the Americans’ game has only accelerated the decomposition of this state.
The main event that could, in the short term, lead to a de-escalation, if not an end to the conflict, would be a change in American policy, with the arrival of a Republican majority in Congress. Since the Ukrainian army is totally on Western funding, a reduction or cessation of aid would cause it to collapse in a few weeks, pushing Kiev to negotiate with Moscow.
Finally, I do not believe in a nuclear war. Neither Moscow nor Washington wants it. But there is a risk that Kiev will act rashly to escalate the conflict. However, Russia and the United States are particularly vigilant about the risks of this uncontrollable regime getting out of control.
Video clips which appear to show Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian prisoners began to circulate online on November 18. It’s unclear when or where the clips were filmed, and their authenticity is still unconfirmed. Russia has sent the clips to the UN and other human rights organizations. Ukraine has not yet commented on the situation.
During the night of November 18, videos allegedly showing Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian prisoners circulated on Internet channels. The clips first appeared on Ukrainian Telegram channels, and then pro-Russian users started to actively share them.
The authenticity of videos posted by independent sources has not been confirmed by independent sources. It’s not clear when they were made. Ukrainian opposition blogger Anatoly Shariy, who takes Russia’s side in the conflict, claims that he posted one of the videos on his private channel “a few days ago.”
In one of the videos, a group of soldiers, apparently in Russian Armed Forces uniforms, is taken prisoner in the courtyard of a home. An armed man then appears in the clip, there are audible gunshots, and the video cuts off abruptly.
A second clip, probably shot by a drone flying over the same courtyard, shows the bodies of 12 soldiers in the same uniform as in the first clip. It is unclear what happened in the time between when the two clips were filmed.
Russian pro-war Telegram channels claim that the videos were filmed in the town of Makiivka, outside of Svatove in the Luhansk region. They also claim that the Ukrainians in the clip are graduates of the Kharkiv National University of International Affairs and, allegedly, former contestants on the humor TV competition KVN.
Valery Fadeev, head of the Russian Presidential Council for Human Rights, called the incident “an emphatically provocative crime” and announced that he would inform the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, human rights organizations, and others – “2,000 addresses” in total.
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a case under the criminal code articles on murder of two or more people in connection with carrying out official duties, and mistreatment of prisoners of war.
Maria Zakharova, official spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, demanded that international organizations “condemn this appalling crime and investigate it thoroughly.”
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that it is already studying the video, says RIA Novosti. Ukrainian representatives have not yet commented on the material.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said the footage “confirms the sadistic nature of the current Kyiv regime” and that such killings are “widespread practice among Ukrainian Armed Forces.” The Ministry also claims that “Ukrainian service members who surrendered this week are being held in accordance with all requirements of the Geneva Convention.”
On November 15, the UN Office of the the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that Ukrainian soldiers in Russian captivity are subject to widespread abuse and torture. The report cited 159 Ukrainians who were taken prisoner and who spoke to the staff of the UN OHCHR. The vast majority of them reported mistreatment. The report also mentions mistreatment of Russian soldiers and isolated cases of torture by Ukrainian soldiers.
Link to video is here. WARNING: video contains graphic and disturbing images.
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 4, 2022, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on the topic of Russia.
According to what we hear from the White House and from the television networks, the issues at stake in the Ukraine War are simple. They concern the evil of Vladimir Putin, who woke up one morning and chose, whether out of sadism or insanity, to wreak unspeakable violence on his neighbors. Putin’s actions are described as an “unprovoked invasion” of a noble democracy by a corrupt autocracy. How we ought to respond is assumed to be a no-brainer. The United States has pledged vast quantities of its deadliest weaponry, along with aid that is likely to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and has brought large parts of the world economy—particularly in Europe—to a standstill.
Now, whenever people in power tell you something is a no-brainer, there’s a good chance that it’s a brainer. And the Ukraine War is more complicated than we’ve been led to assume.
There are reasons why the U.S. might want to project power into the Black Sea region. But we must not ignore that the politics of the region are extraordinarily complex, that the Ukraine conflict is full of paradoxes and optical illusions, and that the theater we are entering has been, over the past 150 years, the single most violent corner of the planet. And unless we learn to respect the complexity of the situation, we risk turning it into something more dangerous, both for Europeans and for ourselves.
Historic Roots of the Conflict
Putin invaded Ukraine after the U.S. rejected his demand for a guarantee that Ukraine not join NATO. We don’t have to excuse Putin, but we should note that, until quite recently, having Ukraine in NATO was a prospect that struck even many American foreign policy thinkers as a bad idea. These included George Kennan, who was one of the architects of the NATO alliance when the Cold War began in the late 1940s. Kennan was still alert and active, at about 90 years of age, when NATO won the Cold War at the turn of the 1990s. And in 1997, during the Clinton administration, he warned that American plans to push NATO borders “smack up to those of Russia” was the “greatest mistake of the entire post–Cold War era.”
John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, is a forceful representative of Kennan’s viewpoint. Mearsheimer is skeptical of “idealist” crusades, like the one in Iraq that George W. Bush drew the country into in 2003. He thinks President Bush dramatically overestimated the degree to which the U.S. could spread its values and its institutions. In light of present events, he especially faults Bush’s push to bring the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO in 2008.
A lot of Americans in government at the time felt the same. One was William Burns, then President Bush’s ambassador in Moscow, now President Biden’s Director of Central Intelligence. In a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Burns wrote the following:
Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. [It would be seen] as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze. . . . It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
In thinking about why this would be the “brightest of all red lines,” consider why it was that the Ukraine problem didn’t get resolved at the end of the Cold War.
Russia is a vast country—the largest in the world. It’s not so much a country as an empire. Even today it has dozens of ethnic republics in it. Maybe you’ve heard of Chechnya or Tatarstan. But have you heard of Tuva? Or Mari-El? Or the Republic of Sakha? Sakha is four times the size of Texas, but it disappears inside of Russia. Back in the day, of course, this vast Russian empire was part of another empire, famously referred to by Ronald Reagan as the Evil Empire—that is, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There were 15 Soviet Republics, including Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Armenia, and Turkestan. And that bigger empire was part of an even bigger empire, which included the Eastern European “captive nations” of Poland and Hungary.
When Communism collapsed in the early 1990s, all these countries found their way to independence, most of them peacefully, some of them bloodily. But Ukraine, while nominally independent, remained bound to Russia in a number of informal ways—sometimes willingly, sometimes reluctantly. Russia kept its Black Sea fleet in Crimea, unmolested by Ukraine. Ukraine got cheap gas and desperately needed financial assistance.
Why wasn’t Ukraine able to make a clean break? Not because it forgot to. Not for lack of can-do spirit. It was just a really hard problem. With the possible exception of Latvia, Ukraine was the most Russian of the non-Russian Soviet Republics. Russian has for a long time been the language of its big cities, of its high culture, and of certain important regions.
If you had to give a one-word answer to what this Ukraine War is about, you would probably say Crimea. Crimea is a peninsula jutting out into the middle of the Black Sea. It’s where the great powers of Europe fought the bloodiest war of the century between Napoleon and World War I. It is a defensive superweapon. The country that controls it dominates the Black Sea and can project its military force into Europe, the Middle East, and even the steppes of Eurasia. And since the 1700s, that country has been Russia. Crimea has been the home of Russia’s warm water fleet for 250 years. It is the key to Russia’s southern defenses.
Crimea found itself within the borders of Ukraine because in 1954, the year after Stalin died, his successor Nikita Khrushchev signed it over to Ukraine. Historians now hotly debate why he did that. But while Crimea was administratively Ukrainian, it was culturally Russian. It showed on several occasions that it was as eager to break with Ukrainian rule as Ukraine was to break with Russian rule. In a referendum in January 1991, 93 percent of the citizens of Crimea voted for autonomy from Ukraine. In 1994, 83 percent voted for the establishment of a dual Crimean/Russian citizenship. We’ll leave aside the referendum held after the Russians arrived in 2014, which resulted in a similar percentage but remains controversial.
Enter the United States
With the end of Communism, Ukraine was beset by two big problems. First, it was corrupt. It was run by post-Communist oligarchs in a way that very much resembled Russia. In many ways Ukraine was worse off. In Russia, Putin—whatever else you may think of him—was at least able to rebuff those oligarchs who sought direct political control.
The second problem for Ukraine was that it was divided between a generally Russophile east and a generally Russophobe west. It was so divided, in fact, that Samuel Huntington devoted a long section in his book The Clash of Civilizations to the border between the two sections. But Huntington did not think that the line dividing them was civilizational. He wrote: “If civilization is what counts . . . the likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low. They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships with each other for centuries.”
The U.S. didn’t see things that way. It backed the Russophobe western Ukrainian side against the Russophile eastern Ukrainian side. This orientation took hold in the Bush administration, during the democracy promotion blitz that accompanied the Iraq War. And in 2004, the U.S. intervened in a crooked election, helping to sponsor and coordinate the so-called Orange Revolution. But the pivotal moment—the moment when the region began to tip into violence—came in early 2014 under more dubious circumstances.
The previous year, Ukrainian diplomats had negotiated a free trade deal with the European Union that would have cut out Russia. Russia then outbid the EU with its own deal—which included $15 billion in incentives for Ukraine and continued naval basing rights for Russia—and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich signed it. U.S.-backed protests broke out in Kiev’s main square, the Maidan, and in cities across the country. According to a speech made at the time by a State Department official, the U.S. had by that time spent $5 billion to influence Ukraine’s politics. And, considering that Ukraine then had a lower per capita income than Cuba, Jamaica, or Namibia, $5 billion could buy a lot of influence. An armory was raided, shootings near the Maidan left dozens of protesters dead, Yanukovich fled the country, and the U.S. played the central role in setting up a successor government.
That the U.S. would meddle with Russia’s vital interests this way created problems almost immediately. Like every Ukrainian government since the end of the Cold War, Yanukovich’s government was corrupt. Unlike many of them, it was legitimately elected, and the U.S. helped to overthrow it.
That was the point when Russia invaded Crimea. “Took over” might be a better description, because there was no loss of life due to the military operation. You can call this a brutal and unprovoked invasion or a reaction to American crowding. We cannot read Putin’s mind. But it would not be evidence of insincerity or insanity if Putin considered the Ukrainian coup—or uprising—a threat. That is what any military historian of the region would have said.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the strategist H.J. Mackinder called the expanse north of the Black Sea the “Geographical Pivot of History.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as National Security Advisor in the Carter administration, used the same “pivot” metaphor to describe Ukraine in his post–Cold War book The Grand Chessboard. “Without Ukraine,” Brzezinski wrote, “Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
The danger to Russia in 2014 was not just the loss of Russia’s largest naval base. It was that that naval base would be acquired by the world’s most sophisticated military power—a power that had shown itself to be Russia’s enemy and that would now sit, with all its weaponry, at Russia’s gateway to the world. When Russians describe Ukrainian membership in NATO as a mortal threat to their country’s survival, they are being sincere.
American and European leaders, although they deplored the Russian occupation of Crimea, seemed to understand that a Russia-controlled Crimea created a more stable equilibrium—and was more to the natives’ liking—than a Ukraine-controlled Crimea. President Obama mostly let sleeping dogs lie. So did President Trump. But they also made large transfers of advanced weaponry and military know-how to Ukraine. As a result, over time, a failed state defended by a ramshackle collection of oligarch-sponsored militias turned into the third-largest army in Europe—right behind Turkey and Russia—with a quarter million men under arms.
Then, on November 10 last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed a “strategic partnership” with Ukraine. It not only committed the U.S. to Ukraine’s full integration into NATO but also stressed Ukraine’s claim to Crimea. This was hubris. Now the Black Sea region’s problems, in all their complexity, risk being thrown into our lap.
Our Problems in Ukraine
When Russia invaded, the U.S. stood by its potential future ally, but without much sense of proportion and seemingly without much attention to the stakes. Let us conclude by discussing the complex military, economic, and political problems we face in dealing with the Ukraine War.
Military Problems
I’m not competent to predict who is going to win this war. But given that Russia is much more powerful than Ukraine—both economically and militarily—the need for U.S. assistance will be immense and indefinite, no matter the war’s outcome. Keeping Ukraine in this war has already come at a high cost in weapons for the U.S. and a high cost in lives for Ukraine.
The U.S. is not just supporting Ukraine. It is fighting a war in Ukraine’s name. From early in the war, we have provided targeting information for drone strikes on Russian generals and missile attacks on Russian ships. Since this summer, the U.S. has been providing Ukraine with M142 HIMARS computer-targeted rocket artillery systems. Ukrainians may still be doing most of the dying, but the U.S. is responsible for most of the damage wrought on Russia’s troops.
This is a war with no natural stopping point. One can easily imagine scenarios in which winning might be more costly than losing. Should the U.S. pursue the war to ultimate victory, taking Crimea and admitting an ambivalent Ukraine into NATO, it will require a Korea-level military buildup to hold the ground taken. It will also change the West. The U.S.—for the first time—will have expanded NATO by conquest, occupying territories (Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine) that don’t want it there.
Economic Problems
American policymakers have launched an unprecedented type of economic warfare against Russia. They expect it to be just as effective as battlefield warfare, but to generate none of the hard feelings. At American urging, Russia has been cut off from the private-but-universal Brussels-based SWIFT system, which is used for international financial transfers. And the U.S. has frozen the hard currency reserves of the Russian central bank—roughly $284 billion.
Long-term, these actions carry risks for the U.S. Our economic power—particularly the dollar’s status as a reserve currency, which permits us to sustain deficits that would bankrupt others—depends on our carrying out our fiduciary responsibilities to international institutions, remembering that the money we are managing is not ours. If you are a banker who pockets his depositors’ money, those depositors will look for another bank. The danger to the United States is that not only Russia, but also China and India, will set up alternative systems through which to move their money.
Political Problems
Finally, we should have learned from the latter stages of George W. Bush’s administration that it is hard to build a forceful foreign policy on top of a wobbly domestic mandate. This is especially true of the Biden administration, which seems unable to distinguish between domestic policy and foreign policy. At the one-month mark after the Russian invasion, for instance, the White House sent a message in which President Biden proclaimed his commitment to those affected by the Russian invasion—“especially vulnerable populations such as women, children, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTQI+) persons, and persons with disabilities.”
President Biden seems to view Russia’s conflict with Ukraine as one of autocracy versus democracy—the same framework he used to describe “MAGA Republicans” in his militaristically choreographed Philadelphia speech in early September.
We should not overestimate how much Americans know or care about Russia and Ukraine. In August, the Pew Center published a study listing the top 15 issues motivating voters in the 2022 elections. Here are those issues in order: the economy, guns, crime, health care, voting rules, education, the Supreme Court, abortion, energy policy, immigration, foreign policy, big government, climate change, race and ethnicity, and the coronavirus. Ukraine doesn’t appear on the list, and generic foreign policy didn’t make the top ten. That doesn’t look like a level of voter buy-in sufficient for running such big economic and military risks.
A dispassionate and honest discussion of Vladimir Putin’s conduct through the years would find much to criticize. Unfortunately, Putin’s name has been dragged into American politics primarily for the purpose of discrediting the presidency of Donald Trump. And the main thing Americans were told about Putin—that he and Trump colluded to steal the 2016 U.S. election—turned out to have no basis in fact. Since then, Congress has become as much an investigative body as a legislative chamber. Should Republicans end up with a majority in one or both houses of Congress next January, it would not be surprising if they investigated the allegation that President Biden’s family enriched itself by trading on his name with corrupt foreign elites—most prominently those in Ukraine.
The largest problem America faces is distrust, both at home and abroad. Thus far the war’s most important world-historical surprise has been the failure of the U.S. to rally a critical mass of what it used to call “the world community” to punish Russia’s contestation of the American-led world order. In the past few decades the U.S. has developed a method of intervention against those it considers ideological adversaries. The U.S. first expresses moral misgivings about a country and then tries to rally other countries to pressure it economically and to isolate it until it relents. This time, India and China did not join us in isolating Russia. It seems they fear that this same machinery can easily be cranked up against them if they’re not careful. And in fact it is being cranked up against China.
Another factor is surely that, after the Iraq War, other countries have less trust in the judgment of the U.S. as to which territories are likely to be suitable candidates for “spreading democracy.”
Finally, the big transformation that has been predicted for a generation now—that power would shift from the U.S. and Europe to Asia and other places—is now measurably underway. In the 1990s, between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the U.S. and its Western European allies controlled 70 percent of world GDP; that number is now 43 percent. The West still does relatively well, but not so well that it can count on the rest of the world to rally behind it automatically. Whether in victory or defeat, Americans may be about to discover that you cannot run a twentieth century foreign policy with a twenty-first century society.
