Alexander Gallus takes a closer look at the developments leading up to this week’s dramatic events and offers some explanations for how we got to this moment. Reading: Gabriel Palcic
Russian tanks assembled at the Russian border to Donbas and preparing for invasion.
The recent Russian military campaign against Ukraine has hardly taken the world by surprise. Over the past months and weeks we have witnessed historic events, moments which radically expose the true nature of the imposing challenges and reality we face, not just in the realm of international politics but here at home. For months now, we have been told that there is “a mounting and indisputable tide of evidence that Putin is poised to launch the biggest military action the world has seen since 1945.” With an in fact evidence-free unanimity and Gleichschaltung of reportage to substantiate such outlandish claims, the American for-profit mainstream media has demonstrated the total degeneration of critical journalism, its steady collapse into hyperbolism and mere stenography for the intelligence strategists and military state. In an awesome suspension of all logic, common sense and critical analysis, we are told repeatedly that we simply cannot know what is “in Putin’s head,” despite repeated vocal statements of Russian security concerns and demands expressed in negotiations throughout this crisis and extensive expressions of the Kremlin’s ruminations. Ultimately, it is the US government and NATO’s historic imperial and economic ambitions, military expansion, national chauvinism and necessary “otherization” of entire peoples to justify its continued existence, that lies at the heart of the last eight years of open tensions and war between Russia and Ukraine.
Whereas conversations in the past around other foreign actors and states, such as Iran or even ISIS, have centered around questioning whether they are “rational actors” or not, this question has been systematically avoided in the past decade when it comes to understanding the motives of the Russian Federation. It is simply asserted that when Putin opens his mouth he cannot be trusted because, as we all know, criminals can never have legitimate grievances but must be punished. How could one understand “Mad Vlad”? No one knows! In fact, in the current political environment, daring to ask this question is tantamount to being a “Russian apologist,” or worse.
We are led to believe that the “Russian bear” is simply hell bent on foreign conquest, on resurrecting the Tsarist Empire or even the Soviet Union. Such claims, despite the obvious conservative capitalist attitudes of the ruling United Russia (UR) party, are made in a vacuum that denies the deteriorating historic relationship between NATO and the precarious position of the capitalist state of Russia vis-a-vis its Western “partners” over the past couple decades. Putin’s pridefully touted decline of “historical Russia” is an objective reality in light of: the collapse of the Soviet Union; mass privatization and corruption; drastic, repeated economic crises through geopolitical challenges; NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, deployment of offensive military systems and its “nuclear sharing” policy; routine NATO nuclear bomber trial flights on the Russian border; rounds of US enforced sanctions against Russia; etc.
Significantly contributing to the development of increased tensions and arms build-up over the past couple decades was the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2000. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says: “In 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin gleefully unveiled a range of new developmental nuclear delivery systems—an intercontinental hypersonic glider, a nuclear-powered cruise missile, and a nuclear-powered torpedo—that he stated were a response to the demise of the ABM Treaty. History appears to back him up.” Note, even this honest account feels the need to qualify the seemingly maniacal “gleeful” attitude of the Russian president. Nonetheless, and despite the contestations that Russia is entirely devoid of legitimate grievances, reality simply tells a different story. Starting with the negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union during the collapse of former East Germany, historical accounts record that “categorical assurances” were repeatedly given to the Soviet and Russian governments that NATO would “not move one inch eastward” into Eastern Europe.
Evidently, this is not what happened. In contrast to these “ironclad” assurances, as reported by Der Spiegel, given to every Russian head of state since Gorbachev, NATO has accepted 17 more members since and almost every single former Warsaw Pact member or Soviet Republic in Europe, with the exceptions of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia itself. Ironically, the Russian Federation also appealed to Bill Clinton to join NATO in 2000 but was denied. Without an imposing “enemy” around the threat of which to discipline the alliance partners and justify its total military budget exceeding $1.2 trillion annually, what use would a European nuclear deterrent military alliance be, besides occasionally toppling over third world tin-pot dictators? This has indeed been a dilemma for the US-dominated North Atlantic alliance, especially after its historic political and military defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The formal strength of the American global hegemon has nonetheless steadily continued through increased US military spending and dizzyingly successful propaganda campaigns to convince the American public and world that Russian aggression and “interference” elected Donald Trump, despite all critical political analyses and evidence to the contrary. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman aptly sum up the American attitude in this regard in Manufacturing Consent: “If there is no hard evidence it is because the Soviets are consummate professionals who cover their tracks and maintain ‘plausible deniability.’” (Herman, Chomsky, pg. 147) Regardless of any connection to reality, these useful myths, pumped out with astonishing effectiveness by the bourgeois media, have helped “otherize” Russia and became the rationale for the onset of Western sanctions and escalating aggression against the Russian people.
Sanctions, encroachment and continual military encirclement of Russia are threats to global peace, and are perceived throughout Russia as a grave threat. Incidentally, Biden’s own CIA Director William J. Burns states in his memoirs that anxiety and opposition to NATO expansion runs “across the entire political spectrum,” and implies that further expansion is not a good strategy for regime change in Russia. The national memory and historical traumas of foreign invasions and neo-colonization of Russia in the 1990’s are deeply felt in that country. More importantly, however, Burns, in his capacity as the United States’s ambassador to Russia, wrote a telegram in 2008 which was published by Wikileaks:
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried [that] the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
However, statements such as those made on February 24th by the European Union President Ursula von der Leyen, a German, lay bare the historically ignorant and chauvinist attitude of our rulers towards the Russian people: “President Putin is trying to turn back the clock to the times of the Russian empire. But in doing so, he is putting at risk the future of the Russian people.” This utterly reactionary and arrogant attitude by the United States and its junior partners has only led to strengthening the “strongest” defenders of Russia and consequently bolstered its reactionaries.
The former Ukrainian Soviet dissident, Constantine Pleshakov, born in Crimea, explains in his book The Crimean Nexus: Putin’s War and the Clash of Civilizations, how the American diplomatic corps and consultants arriving in Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union intended to paternalistically teach the Russians how to do “democracy” and have continually expressed appallingly chauvinist attitudes, not only towards its partners in the Russian oligarchy but towards the Russian people. Arriving in Moscow in 2012, President Obama’s ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, cheerfully introduced himself as a specialist on “democracy and revolution.” Pleshakov explains, “The Kremlin did not hesitate to make its displeasure clear. Harassed by government TV crews, who seemed to know the ambassador’s schedule better than his assistants did and shadowed his every move, McFaul eventually lost his cool, publicly called Russia a ‘barbaric, uncivilized country’ and in February 2014 angrily submitted his resignation.” (Pleshakov, pg. 34)
As has been frequently cited, Putin’s statement that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century was followed up by what is a common sentiment in Russia, namely that its collapse and the resulting mass privatization was a “genuine tragedy” for the Russian people. In his rather jingoist conception, the fall of the Soviet Union was mainly a tragedy because millions of Russians found themselves outside the borders of Russia overnight. Yet, given the complex history and ethnically fractured nature of the region, especially of Ukraine, it simply is a fact that this was the case. Ethnic tensions frozen in time throughout the period of the Soviet Union’s existence became apparent only after its collapse. Haughty western assertions of respecting “national sovereignty” in Ukraine completely dismiss the complex history and ethnic tensions ratcheted up by Ukrainian nationalist policies of the past years.
For eight years, the Minsk Agreement has been systematically deemed a non-starter by Kiev, which opted to continually fight a war with the separatists and denied talks with these “terrorists.” Furthermore, instead of ceding to Russian demands to start large-scale, intensive negotiations for European security, ones which last more than one day in existing forums such as Normandy Forum etc., Western alliance members have backed the unfounded Ukrainian nationalist aspirations to expel Russian troops from “its” territories in Crimea and the southeast of “modern Ukraine,” composed of Russian ethnic or language majorities. Despite repeated proclamations and forceful demands from the Kremlin that genuine negotiations on its security concerns be initiated – concerning NATO expansion and offensive military installations on its borders, new installations that could reach Moscow in a matter of a few minutes from Ukraine if it joined NATO, leaving no response time for a counter-attack – these demands have been waved off for months and years. Although it is clear that Ukraine is not eligible for NATO membership, due to its ongoing territorial disputes and other reasons, the United States has felt compelled by its foreign policy to deny giving binding assurances to Russia that Ukraine is, in fact, ineligible. Instead, we’ve seen Ukraine designated as an “enhanced opportunity partner” of NATO and showered in “lethal aid.”
Again, it is the Western alliance’s need for an enemy that informs this, on the surface, utterly irrational, irresponsible and destructive approach. Even the Washington Post entertains the idea that, perhaps—maybe—it would be better to treat an on-par nuclear armed state such as Russia with more diplomatic tact. The truth of the matter is that it has been a long-stated goal of US foreign policy experts to separate Ukraine from Russia in order to militarily disable its defenses and further weaken the Russian state’s standing in the imperialist hierarchy of states and the global market. As the American Foreign Service says: “In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski characterized Ukraine as a ‘geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country [means] Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’ Although not often publicly expressed by officials to avoid antagonizing Russia, this strategic recognition has undergirded much of U.S. policy to this day.”
Naturally, when years of investing $5 Billion into Ukrainian “democracy” bore fruit and Victoria Nuland was “embarrassingly” revealed to be influencing the elections in Ukraine in 2014, the United States got closer to fulfilling this strategic goal. If this strategy required propping up all stripes of nationalists or arming open neo-nazis, then “That’s a Good Thing.” Serving as Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s assistant in overseeing the democratic renovation and economic restructuring of post-Soviet Russia, Victoria Nuland good-naturedly commented at the time, “That’s what happens when you try to get the Russians to eat their spinach. The more you tell them it’s good for them, the more they gag.” As Talbott records in his memoirs, this phrase, “getting the Russians to eat their spinach,” became the catchphrase of their mission and activities in Russia. (Pleshakov, pg. 35) It is no surprise then that the Russian people reacted to this protestant evangelism about ‘democracy’ and consequent economic destruction with a landslide victory for the strongman Vladimir Putin.
Underlying our common public perception of Russia is an unrelenting media campaign, waged over the course of years, which seeks to paint Russia as the aggressive “other,” which as a matter of course needs to be militarily countered and encircled. This narrative thereby flips reality on its head: it is not the “strictly defensive” alliance of NATO which could ever be charged with aggression. Anything the United States and its military alliance does is simply defensive in its nature. Yet, this graciousness is not granted to Russia of course, because it is, implicitly, in its nature, not defensive but the aspirant Tsarist Empire, Soviet Empire, take your pick. While there are certainly reactionary traditions and patriotic allusions to “Great Russia” utilized by the Kremlin, it does not dispel the fundamental reality of the dynamics of recent historical developments and Russia’s attempts to implement the Minsk agreement. One view at NATO’s track record, whether in Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Yemen etc. or the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state, clarifies that the United States and NATO have been at the forefront of breaking all previous norms of international law and setting destructive precedents now exposed for the world to see in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Constantine Pleshakov sums up aptly what the nature of US-Russian relations have been:
What is often missed about Putin’s foreign policy is that it is largely reactive. Moscow deemed American involvement in Ukraine as unacceptable. . . The ease with which the United States now dropped a democratically elected President, Yanukovych, and gave unqualified recognition to insurgents in Kiev enraged the Kremlin. For the second time in ten years, America had supported, if not outright orchestrated, a regime change in Russia’s ‘sister country.’ Was a coup in Moscow next? NATO expansion and US political engineering in the near abroad were two factors driving the strong Russian response to regime change in Kiev. (Pleshakov, pg. 58)
Further, he reiterates that the actions of NATO are perceived across the political spectrum of Russia as a threat, much to the dismay of the American diplomats over the past years. A further round of sanctions from the US administration and its allies will only spell more confrontation between NATO and Russia, a logic which can only end in disaster. However, of course, many commentators are, at this moment, still desperately grappling for the established western playbook of sanctions and regime change in Russia as a new round of sanctions and US troop deployments to Eastern Europe are announced by the White House.
But as we have seen in Iraq, in Iran and elsewhere, collective punishments of entire peoples through crippling sanctions do not bring about by themselves imperialist regime change, but only serve to further entrench their governments in a defensive stance and increase war. Russia, despite its disproportionately smaller $61 billion annual military budget vs. NATO’s combined $1.2 trillion, is not Iraq, Iran or Libya, but an on-par nuclear armed state. Even after Russia’s invasion, the only way out of this crisis, besides mass worker’s parties and revolution, is for the United States to finally take Russia’s security concerns seriously, to not increase collective sanctions on the Russian people, and to open intensive European security negotiations that will guarantee peace. Furthermore, we should recognize that our US government’s and NATO’s strategy of global hegemony is an aggressive one which systematically threatens peace and cooperation among peoples, and which has killed hundreds of thousands in this century alone. We should campaign to disband NATO’s antiquated existence. For us, the main enemy is still at home!
- Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky; Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media; Pantheon Books; 1995.
- Constantine Pleshakov; The Crimean Nexus: Putin’s War and the Clash of Civilizations; Yale University Press; 2017
