Russia’s Attack on Ukraine: Does History Matter?

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Preamble

Vladimir Putin’s brazen and criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine is indefensible. War is always an atrocity and the suffering of those caught in its demonic grasp should always be the prime concern along with actions to mitigate the torment. These points should elicit zero debate.

Yet I have been slogging away at this, my first Substack article, since shortly after Russia's invasion—agonizing over the brutality, the sheer stupidity—while researching, fact-checking, revising, scrutinizing my own pre-conceptions, wavering.

Why the vacillation? Putin’s horrific gambit clearly violates international law, the UN Charter and has no moral justification. Despite a lengthy list of serious crimes of aggression committed by others, especially the US (now clouded in Western hypocrisy and hubris) nothing validates Russia’s actions. Getting away with it, as others do, does not make might right.

At the same time, the war has ignited a conformist media narrative and groupthink within the West to a degree of non compare. As former Italian diplomat, Marco Carnelos, says: “Europe and America, which regard themselves as the cradles of critical thinking and of freedom of speech, have become dangerously intolerant to dissenting views; rivers of anger flow in the direction of anyone who dares express in good faith any doubt about the risks that certain choices may imply for the world's peace and economy.”

Yet alternative narratives do exist regarding the origins, perils and possible resolutions surrounding the war (beyond a fight to the death with Russia that risks potential termination of the species). And there are rifts amongst respected experts. But these are found on the periphery of discourse; it takes considerable digging behind the headlines to bypass the algorithmic suppression accompanying a standard google search of the Ukraine War.

Moreover, as Western-supplied heavy weaponry flows into Ukraine, calls for a no-fly zone imposed by NATO jets is as perilous an idea as any in the nuclear age as this would place NATO in direct contact with Russia’s air force and anti-aircraft batteries on the ground, including within Russia. In addition, expansion of US war aims now extend beyond protecting Ukraine to include the “weakening of Russia” with calls for regime change.

One would hope that a proxy war against a nuclear-armed adversary—that could spark World War Three—would elicit fervent debate within the West’s legacy media and political system. No such luck.

On the contrary, as with past conflicts the usual parade of media stenographers of a US-centric worldview predictably fill the corporate news shows, print media and online portals. These include “respected experts” from major think tanks, many of whom played key roles in recent disastrous foreign policies and who often consult for the very weapons firms and defence contractors who stand to profit the most from a ramped-up, prolonged war.

Like George W. Bush declared after 9-11, “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

But it feels different this time—in its intensity, its pervasive amnesia. It’s like the ebb and flow of 30+ years of post-Cold War relations doesn’t matter. Like history doesn’t matter.

These final opening remarks contain both an assertion and an appeal. Like the viral plague that still plagues us there’s nothing like a major war to give the social media plague its booster shot, leading to more toxic polarization, and less truth. The tendency to “double down” even in the face of corrective facts and resort to ad hominem attacks is a rampant contagion.

On the other hand, from a fact-based perspective one can draw informed conclusions, learn from others and not lose friendships over differing or nuanced views. No narrative is infallible and respectful discourse is welcome.

With these caveats in mind, we now turn to the topic at hand.

Invasion a Surprise

Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine took by surprise not just many Ukrainians but also a great number of academics and experts across the spectrum. Luminaries include Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan; Nikita Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs and great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev; Russia expert Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher at The Nation and Washington Post columnist—and independent journalists such as Matt Taibbi and many others.

Attempts to understand the circumstances and geopolitics at play behind Russia’s attack should not be construed as justification, nor even partial validation—for what amounts to a major war crime. Seeking context should in no way serve to excuse Putin’s assault—and the death, destruction and misery it continues to inflict.

The old adage that “truth is the first casualty of war” is also a relevant truism. Whenever sabres rattle and the missiles start flying, competing narratives take shape as the fog of war descends. Russian state propaganda may be blunt, amateurish and laughable, but there is propaganda on all sides as rival discourses clash over Ukraine.

NATO & Ukraine: Redline or Red Herring?

As part of the 1994 Budapest Declaration, Russia formally agreed to recognize the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine which had gained its independence from the former USSR in 1991, in exchange for Ukraine consenting to becoming a non-nuclear weapon state—adding weight to the illegality of Putin’s current onslaught.

Though it has become unpopular to recount, meanwhile fourteen additional members have been added to the NATO alliance since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This broke a verbal promise by the US/NATO to President Gorbachev to not expand “one inch” into Eastern Europe, during the 1990 negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union over German unification. Many analysts have cited the enlargement of NATO, which has moved steadily closer to Russia’s borders, as a significant factor in Russia’s decision to ultimately invade.

Noam Chomsky has warned for years that poking the Russian bear near and on its border has been a reckless policy, as have many Russia experts and former government officials. Indeed the list of high-level US strategic thinkers and experts who cautioned that continued NATO expansion was “a policy error of historic proportions," “overreaching,” “provocative,” “is stupid on every level,” "could spark a war"—is vast.

George F. Kennan, the American diplomat and historian best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of the Soviet Union, which led to the formation of NATO in 1949, was shocked at NATO’s enlargement when he wrote in 1998:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.”

According to Jack Matlock, the former US ambassador to Russia, “Since Putin’s major demand is an assurance that NATO will take no further members, and specifically not Ukraine or Georgia, obviously there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia...To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence—the avowed aim of those who agitated for the ‘color revolutions’—was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis?”

Others with specialized Russia experience have echoed similar sentiments. These include the Clinton administration’s former Defence Secretary William Perry, as well as the highly respected international relations scholar, John Mearsheimer.

Indeed the former US ambassador to Russia and current CIA director, William Burns issued this warning in his memoir: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in 2008. Obviously Burns must now necessarily support the Biden administration’s narrative that the US bears no blame whatsoever for everything that led to the current crisis.

Putin’s calls for a new security arrangement date back years, as articulated in the Munich Security Conference of 2007, where he expressed his desire for a return to the 19th century realist notion of spheres of influence. This stands in contrast to the US/NATO’s stated concern that all countries choose their economic and military relationships freely.

Yet “sphere of interest” is very much at play within US foreign policy planning. The difference is that the US sphere is not just its own backyard, nor even its own hemisphere (i.e. the Monroe Doctrine) but as stated under the US military’s strategic doctrine of full spectrum dominance, it amounts to “dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment, which includes cyberspace, that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference”—of the entire planet.

At the NATO Bucharest Summit in April 2008—at the insistence of the US but against the wishes of Germany—Ukraine applied to begin the NATO membership action plan together with Georgia. Russia instigated its war against Georgia shortly thereafter.

Adding to tensions, under Trump in 2019 the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and from the Treaty on Open Skies in 2020, with Russia following suit in both cases. The US had already pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 under George W. Bush, which led to its demise. Meanwhile, expansion of NATO meant installation of anti-ballistic missiles in Romania and Poland, leaving Moscow highly vulnerable, especially if retrofitted with offensive Tomahawk missiles.

The geo-strategic significance of Ukraine was clearly identified for many years as a potential East-West flashpoint. The US and NATO opted to ignore many of their own experts.

Instead, decades-long warnings that NATO enlargement could lead to a major crisis, including war in Ukraine, are now being spun by the commentariate as a “red herring” because Ukraine was many years away from official NATO membership.

Ukraine as NATO Add-on

In 2013-14, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising devolved into violent street confrontations that led to the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovich, who, though corrupt, was democratically elected. A leaked phone call by Victoria Nuland who was at the time the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, to then US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, indicated that a high level of US planning had occurred to bring about Yanukovych’s replacement. With US backing, Yanukovych was ultimately forced from office after making a U-turn in trade policy away from Europe towards economic cooperation with Russia.

It is worth highlighting a pertinent detail contained in Europe’s offer to Yanukovich, which was rejected. According to the late American scholar of Russian studies, Professor Stephen F. Cohen: 

“That economic trade agreement that Yanukovych was offered, so-called European Partnership, had a clause that said that if you signed it, you agreed to adhere to the procedures, rules and norms of NATO. Very few people know that was included, but the Russians knew, they’ve got a lot of international lawyers…what this was, was an attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO, via the back door…”

With Yanukovych gone, and his replacement with a pro-western government within Russia's politically divided neighbour, billions of dollars in US weapons began to flow into Ukraine and NATO countries began training tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops. Putin then annexed Crimea, with its largely Russian speaking population and started arming separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In 2014, war in eastern Ukraine broke out between Ukraine’s army and Russian-backed separatists. United Nations statistics indicate that up until this year, over 80 percent of the casualties occurred in the separatist-held areas of the contested Donbas region. This does not legitimate Putin’s claims of “genocide” against ethnic Russians in Ukraine's separatist-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. But if the mass media were interested in pursuing facts rather than pretending Ukraine was "peaceful until just days ago" (a fantasy explained by CNN’s intrepid reporter, Jim Sciutto, back in early March) then such statistics would bear further investigation. Over 14,000 people had already been killed in fighting before Russia’s invasion. But for CNN these people didn’t exist.

Reports by Human Rights Watch over several years reveal that both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces have engaged in human rights violations including arbitrary detention and torture. In fact, a careful analysis of the recent history reveals a cynical manipulation of the Donbas region’s peoples and their aspirations by both sides.

Meanwhile, American meddling in Ukraine from 2014 onwards was very much a catalyst of the crisis and ongoing conflict. Jeff Rogg, historian of U.S. intelligence and an assistant professor in the Department of Intelligence and Security Studies at the Citadel, notes that the CIA has been training Ukrainian Special Forces and intelligence officers in the US since 2015 to fight a counterinsurgency war.

In 2019 Ukraine altered its own constitution to facilitate joining both the EU and NATO. At the time of Russia's invasion, Ukranian armed forces were being trained within the US , first off the Mississippi Coast and then in Virginia for additional advanced tactical training on US systems being used in the war, including Switchblade drones.

Another prod at the Russian bear came last November 10 with the signing of the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in NATO.

In pre-invasion negotiations, Russia sought a written guarantee to stop NATO expansion and prohibit Ukrainian membership. This was rejected by the US, even though as mentioned earlier, such membership is extremely unlikely any time soon.

With Russian troops amassing and tensions rising, at the Munich security conference on February 19 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky  suggested restoring Ukraine as a nuclear power (like Russia’s invasion, this too would breach the 1994 Budapest Declaration).

Was the prospect of a future nuclear-armed Ukraine aligned as a de-facto member of NATO the final signal for Putin to go for broke? Three days after the invasion began, Putin subsequently upped the brinkmanship by putting Russian nuclear forces on alert.

Surveying this history does not absolve Russia’s aggression. Rather it is intended to shed needed light on the circumstances leading up to the world’s worst geopolitical crisis in decades and to recognize that the culpable parties extend beyond the Kremlin. It behooves us to have a firm grasp of the recent past lest the narrative be dictated by those who would deny its agency.

NATO Expansion & Russian Imperialism

A common counterview posits that Russia (or at least Putin) had been planning to invade Ukraine as part of a long-standing recovery project to rebuild the Russian empire.

It is true that Russian chauvinism and aggression towards Ukraine dates back centuries and that a colonial relationship existed between Tsarist and then Stalinist Russia. But if Russian imperialism is the crux of the matter—and nothing else really matters—it will indeed be one of history’s great ironies that the West’s military industrial complex becomes a main beneficiary of such despotic bullying—thanks to the lost marbles of Mr. Putin.

Why, in a massive historic blunder, would Putin hand to NATO and the entire US-dominated weapons industry what amounted to a late Christmas gift? Setting aside Putin’s mental acuity (more on that in the future) and the incompetence of his advisors, there has clearly been an interplay between on the one hand US imperialism and NATO extension, and on the other, Russian imperialism and nationalist ambitions and delusions regarding Ukraine.

Tony Wood in the New Left Review offers this insight: “There is no real world in which NATO expansion did not occur, and the emergence of an increasingly assertive and militarized Russian nationalism is inextricable from that process, because it was in large part propelled and reinforced by it.”

Such a historic relationship cannot be dismissed.

Nor should we ignore the existence of far right forces within Ukraine and Russia and how each has fed off ethnic animus towards the other. In Ukraine there are ultra-nationalists and rightwing extremists such as the Azov Battalion, C-14, Svoboda and Right Sector, many of whom dream of a “racially pure Ukraine.” And they have had military support from the US and NATO countries. According to a report published by the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, far-right extremists in the Ukrainian military bragged about Canadian training as cited in this CTV news report.

However, the fact that Ukraine has a neo-Nazi problem, as many have warned for years, does not justify Putin’s invasion nor should his distorted claims of “denazification” be seen as a motivating factor. Putin has his own record of weaponizing fascist groups who have shown up in the Donbas; in fact, German neo-Nazis and other nationals trained at Russian camps  before being sent there while Russian mercenaries in Ukraine have been linked to far-right extremists.

Perhaps this is a grim commentary on the region (though to be fair, unfortunately there are far-right groups and neo-Nazis throughout the world these days).

We cannot get inside the heads of all the players here—least of all Mr. Putin—who stands rightfully condemned for committing the supreme crime of international aggression.

Meanwhile, the US/NATO is committed to a protracted proxy war to “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian” (as Chas Freeman, President Clinton’s former assistant secretary of defence sarcastically quipped). If there was diplomatic room to avert war, as US-led obstruction of the negotiating efforts suggests, then this is an especially cynical and cruel strategy, especially for Ukraine.

At the same time,  our tech overlords are busy de-platforming critics such as Chris Hedges and other dissident media in the so-called fight for freedom against Putin’s repression.

Honest attempts to contextualize the events that led to this unravelling, escalatory disaster should be encouraged, not cancelled by war fever. Tossing the crucial historical record down the memory hole only “dumbs down” the discourse and inflames tensions in an already much divided world. To understand how to get out of the morass, one must understand how we got into it. Off ramps towards peace in Ukraine demand it.

Instead what we get is increasingly dangerous rhetoric with potentially terrifying consequences from, for example, US general and former supreme NATO commander General Philip Breedlove, who recently called for NATO troops to be stationed in Ukraine.

Does history matter? Does the future?

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