Why Ukraine, why now?
Who started it?
Ukraine has the dubious honour of being top of consciousness for the western world nowadays. Unfortunately, this is due to precarious reasons.
Prior to the 24th of February 2022, Americans would have been hard pressed to pinpoint Kiev on a map. What that reveals about the public education system in the lower 48 states is a separate issue. For now, I'd prefer to focus on why Ukraine, a country almost 6000 miles away from the United States of America, is suddenly a big concern for the average American citizen.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made it so that this region, previously all but ignored by the layperson, is now the center of attention. All major news networks and publications have found the subject of Russia's invasion to be a treasure trove of content.What is happening in Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin and his entourage have organised what they termed a 'special military operation' in order to achieve specific goals in Ukraine. The stated goals of this military endeavour were described as being the demilitarisation and denazification of Russia's neighbour. We'll come back to this later.
The USA and its' acolytes, who refer to themselves as the international community (although their cumulative populations are no more than 1 billion people) have referred to the Russian actions in Ukraine using the terms 'invasion' and/or 'unprovoked war'. The word 'unprovoked' has been emphasised and repeated ad nauseam.
As the venerable Noam Chomsky recently pointed out during an appearance on the Useful Idiots podcast: “Right now if you’re a respectable writer and you want to write in the main journals, you talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you have to call it ‘the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine...”Is it misleading to refer to the Russian invasion as unprovoked? The answer, to my mind, is a big, fat, resounding YES. Fortunately, in taking this view, I find myself in good company. Prof. John J. Mearsheimer, from the University of Chicago, the legendary journalist and television host Vladimir Pozner, the historian Steven Kotkin, and the late and great historian Stephen Cohen, are but a few of those who share this perspective on things. It's precisely because it was provoked that the western mainstream media incessantly insists on using the term 'unprovoked' when describing what is taking place in Ukraine.
What was the nature of the provocation?
A broken promise looks to be at the heart of the matter. The full story goes back to approximately two years before the dissolution of the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker, who at the time was the US Secretary of State, had a meeting in Moscow on the 9th of February 1990. One of the most fascinating parts of the discussion was the following quote by Baker:
'And the last point. NATO is the mechanism for securing the U.S. presence in Europe. If NATO is liquidated, there will be no such mechanism in Europe. We understand that not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction. We believe that consultations and discussions within the framework of the “two + four” mechanism should guarantee that Germany’s unification will not lead to NATO’s military organisation spreading to the east.'
The full record of the conversation is available on the National Security Archive website at https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16117-document-06-record-conversation-between
Towards the end of the year 1991, the USSR was showing signs of a possible dissolution. This finally occurred on the 26th of December. This momentous historical event meant that the behemoth formerly known as the USSR, now divided into 15 supposedly independent states, with Russia as the biggest by far, retaining approximately 75% of the former union's territory. Mikhail Gorbachev was no longer the person in charge. He lost all power and became somewhat of a pariah. A new charismatic leader emerged as the president of Russia. His name was Boris Yeltsin.
The transition from a fully comunist system to a market based one was done haphazardly in Russia. This led to chaos, an incredible spike in crime, rampant poverty and corruption, and the enrichment of a handful of people who later became known as oligarchs. They were close friends and allies of the political leadership. This tried and true path to enrichment persists in Russia to this day, although it has to be said that the population at large no longer suffers from the crippling poverty that affected it back then.
These tumultuous times in Russia's history made it so that, on the geopolitical stage, it became weak. Whereas the USSR was viewed as a peer competitor and a military threat by the USA during the Cold War, Russia in the 1990's was seen as the defeated oponent by the Clinton administration, which was then governing the White House.
Baker's promise to Gorbachev was broken on the 12th of March 1999, The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland officially joined NATO. Some analysts maintain the idea that the broken promise premise is erroneous due to the simple fact that the USSR no longer existed at the time that the new members joined the defensiveorganisation. (I use the word 'defensive' in the same way the media use the word 'unprovoked'). Therefore, what was promised to its' leader was moot. Yes, if it were a school debate, this might constitute a valid argument. But in the arena of geopolitics where miscalculations and provocations can lead to large scale conflicts and potential total annihilation, things aren't quite as cut and dry.
That was the start of the escalating tensions and the cause for the Russian grievances. Things would only become more fraught with danger as the years went by and the US and its' subsidiary, NATO, displayed total disregard for any security concerns the Russians put forward.
America had all the money, all the influence, all the weapons and a strong belief in American exceptionalism and their sacred role as purveyor of democracy and free market capitalism to every nation on the planet, no matter how remote, reluctant, or culturally different. Why would they stop NATO expansion? They had all the advantages and their rivals were weak.
More countries joined the alliance in 2004. In 2017 Montenegro joined NATO. Finally, in 2020, North Macedonia was welcomed into the fold. All these additions rubbed the Kremlin the wrong way. The reason for that should be clear. The newer member states were getting closer and closer to Russia's border. The defensivealliance was closing in, and building all manner of installations with balistic nuclear missile launch capacity in the vicinity of its' territory.
To be continued…