American Infallibility

Beneath the widespread stubborn American refusal to understand the Russian government's motives for its condemnable invasion of Ukraine is the equally widespread stubborn refusal to learn from the U.S. government's wrong moves with respect to Russia over the last 30 years. But even deeper is the widespread stubborn refusal to even entertain the possibility that the U.S. government might have made any wrong moves at all.

TGIF: When History Begins - Russia, Ukraine & the US

Contrary to what hypocritical U.S. rulers and their loyal mass media suggest, two propositions can both be -- and indeed are -- true:

1. that Russia has grossly, brutally, and criminally mishandled the situation it has faced with respect to Ukraine, and
2. that the U.S. government since the late 1990s has been entirely responsible for imposing that situation on Russia.

If you want the fine details, you can do no better than to watch my Libertarian Institute colleague Scott Horton's excellent cataloging of the irresponsible misdeeds of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joseph Biden in this recent lecture. If, after absorbing this shocking record of indisputable facts, you are seething at what the U.S. government has done to squander a historic chance for good relations with Russia, you will be fully justified -- and then some. (See also this 2015 lecture by John Mearsheimer, the respected "realist" foreign policy analyst at the University of Chicago.)

To appreciate what bipartisan U.S. foreign policy has wrought, think about 1989 when the undreamt-of virtually bloodless dismantling of the Soviet empire began. At that point humanity was on the verge of a new chapter in which the world's largest nuclear superpowers would no longer confront each other, holding everyone hostage. Think about that, and then learn how the U.S. government blew it deliberately, despite all the warnings that the consequences would be dire. (Over-optimism about what might have been is always a danger. In 1990, when President George H. W. Bush ordered Iraq's Saddam Hussein to remove his army from Kuwait, Bush declared a "New World Order," admonishing, "What we say goes." The Russians no doubt noticed.)

How so? By kicking the Russian people in the teeth repeatedly in all kinds of ways when they were reeling from seven decades of communism. If the U.S. government's intent had been to destroy the chance for this historic turn, it couldn't have done a better job.

Americans have a funny way of thinking that history began the day of the latest crisis. The politicians and media feed this bad habit. So if Russia invades Ukraine, the only explanation is that he's power-mad, if not just plain mad. The idea that the U.S. might have set the stage isn't allowed to be entertained. With social-media magnates sucking up to the power elite, this is serious stuff.

Do Americans want to know why Russia went to war? They might not like to hear that "their" government must shoulder a good deal of blame, but it's undeniable that since World War II the power that occupies Middle North America has had its heavy hand in virtually every part of the world. The rules of international law that all nations are supposed to observe simply don't apply to the United States. Just look at the invasions and regime changes that have gone on since 2001, not to mention back to the early 1950s. That's what it means to be the exceptional nation. The rules apply to everyone except America's rulers. (See Robert Wright's "In Defense of Whataboutism.")

This history forms the larger context in which the unconscionable Russian war on Ukraine -- with all the terror it's inflicting on innocents -- is taking place. It is unseemly for an American president to piously admonish the Russian government about its breaches of national sovereignty in light of the shameful U.S. record.

Since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S. presidents have taken a series of actions that seemed designed to make the Russians distrust the West in the new era. This is not hindsight. As noted, many respected establishment foreign-policy figures warned against such measures.

The measures included the bombing of Russia's ally Serbia in the late 1990s; the repeated expansion of NATO, the postwar alliance founded to counter the Soviet Union, to include former Soviet allies and republics; the public talk of including the former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia in the Western alliance; the trashing of long-standing anti-nuclear-weapons treaties with Russia; the placing of defensive missile launchers (which could be converted to offensive launchers) in Poland and Romania: the attempts to sabotage the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline deal; instigating the 2014 regime change in Ukraine (following earlier regime-changes operations in Ukraine and Georgia); the arming of Ukraine since 2017; the conducting of NATO war exercises, with U.S. personnel, near the Russian border; the years-long evidence-free effort to persuade Americans that Russia manipulated the 2016 presidential election to elect Donald Trump; and much, much, much more. Trump -- recall his goading of NATO members into spending more on their militaries -- was among the offenders: his anti-Russia moves, including NATO expansion like all of his 21st-century predecessors, would fill a list as long as Wilt Chamberlain's arm. If he was a Russian puppet, as the Democrats, intelligence apparatus, and mainstream media want us to believe, then the Russians have a great deal to learn about puppeteering.

Take one of the biggest spurs to war: the eastward expansion of NATO, which the U.S. government and Western Europe promised would not happen after Germany was reunited while the Soviet Union was heading toward termination. It happened anyway, but not because Russia had behaved badly toward the West. It hadn't. In fact, after 9/11 Russian ruler Vladimir Putin was the first to call Bush II to offer his support. Later Putin even suggested that Russia be invited to join NATO, something President George H. W. Bush had once mentioned. One wonders why NATO was even necessary with the Soviet Union gone, but if Russia could join -- really, what was the point?

The expansion of NATO by 1,200 miles toward Russia demonstrates how myopic American rulers can be. American critics repeatedly pointed out that no president would not have tolerated Russia's inviting Mexico and Canada into its now-defunct Warsaw Pact. Yet NATO now includes the Baltic states -- those former Soviet republics on the Russian border, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia --and Eastern European states that were once in the Warsaw Pact.

Indeed, we already know how the U.S. government reacts when its security concerns are flouted. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy was ready to launch a nuclear war against the Soviet Union when it placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. For days the world sat on the edge of its seat wondering if the end was near. (I remember it!) Finally, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev withdrew the missiles, but only when Kennedy secretly agreed to remove American nuclear-tipped missiles from Turkey.

Later American presidents forgot about that crisis. Clinton added Warsaw Pact states late in his second term. Then it was Bush II's turn. At its April 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO declared that it "welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO." This was a fateful move. As noted, pillars of the foreign policy establishment from George Kennan to Paul Nitze to Robert McNamara had already forcefully spoken out against the first rounds of NATO expansion, which included the Baltic states. No less a figure than Willian Burns, Bush II's ambassador to Russia and now Biden's CIA chief, said in 2008,

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.

Putin responded to the summit declaration, saying he deemed it a "direct threat" to Russia. A few months later, the emboldened president of Georgia, on Russia's southern border, attacked EU-authorized Russian peacekeepers in the Republic of South Ossetia, which had earlier broken away from Georgia. Russia responded by invading and occupying Georgia. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili thought -- no doubt lead on by the U.S. government -- that the West would back him up, but it did not. Washington, London, Paris, and the rest of NATO were not willing to go to risk a nuclear war with Russia over South Ossetia. (Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky seems to be imitating Shaakashvili.)

This is all too similar to what's going on today, but with something more. After talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO, the U.S. and EU in February 2014 instigated a coup in Kyiv, in which opponents of the government, including neo-Nazis, drove a democratically elected and Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, from office. A leaked recording of a phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (now a Biden official) and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt revealed that the coup and the new leadership of the country were orchestrated by the U.S. State Department. This followed billions of dollars in U.S. aid to "pro-democracy," that is, anti-Yanukovych, organizations.

Yanukovych had been willing to deal with the European Union, but when he balked at the terms of the proposed loan, Russia offered Ukraine $15 billion under more favorable terms. This the EU and U.S. government could not tolerate. Yanukovych had to go.

Keep in mind that eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which is filled with Russian-speaking people, had voted heavily for Yanukovych, with the western part going for his opponent. So driving out the elected president was a direct slap at the ethnic Russians. When the new government came to power, it downgraded Russians from official-language status and tried to cut back on the autonomy of the far-eastern provinces, the Donbas region, which borders Russia. Violence erupted and has continued. Meanwhile, Russia annexed Crimea, which has been a Russian security concern and the home of its only year-round warm-water naval base since the 18th century. Russia could not take the risk that Crimea would become a base for NATO forces. The predominantly ethnic Russians in Crimea approved of the annexation. But one thing Russia refused to do was to accept an annexation invitation from the people in the Donbas.

As a result, the U.S. government sent large amounts of aid to Ukraine, but Obama refused to send weapons because he did not want to escalate the conflict or risk direct war with Russia. He noted, properly, that Ukraine was a core security interest of Russia but not of the United States and that in a conflict over nearby Ukraine, Russia would have a large advantage over the United States, despite America's much larger military. Trump, however, reversed Obama's policy and sent massive arms shipments to Ukraine, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

As Russia increased pressure on Ukraine over the last year, with a buildup of troops near the border, it made clear its demands: no NATO membership for Ukraine and no missile launchers in Eastern Europe. Since taking office, Biden has talked tough, proclaiming that the United States would support Ukrainian sovereignty, while also saying, first, that U.S. troops would not be committed, second, that Ukraine would not be joining NATO anytime soon, and third, that offensive nuclear missiles would not be placed in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, he scoffed at Russia's demands, insisting that no one but NATO would decide who became a member. This sounded like schoolyard pettiness, with Biden refusing to formalize for Russia his disavowal of things that Biden had already said he would not do.

Would Russia have shelved plans for the invasion had Biden not been so wrongheaded? Who can say? But what was there to lose?

So here we are. The situation is dangerous in a global sense because, in the fog of war, shit happens. (Sorry.) It doesn't help that some prominent Americans, still in the minority, want the U.S. government to do more than impose sanctions, send even more troops to neighboring NATO countries, and further arm Ukraine, all of which Biden is doing -- some, like President Zelensky, are calling for a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would bring America into direct military conflict with Russia. Some are even calling for regime change in Russia. Need we be reminded that, like the U.S. government, Russia has thousands of hydrogen bombs ready to launch. Are these people nuts?

No, history did not begin on February 24, 2022, or even March 18, 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

What now? It's ridiculous to think that Russia -- given its $1.5 trillion GDP (smaller than Italy's and Texas's) and $60 billion military budget (6 percent of the total U.S. military budget) -- is out to re-establish the Russian empire of old or the Soviet Union. To put things in perspective, the U.S. government has had recent annual increases in military spending that exceeded Russia's entire military budget.

The goal must be a ceasefire. Biden can facilitate that by doing what he should have done long ago: put in writing that Ukraine and Georgia will not join NATO, that the missile launchers will be removed from Eastern Europe, and that the war exercises on Russia's border will end. Ukraine could help by accepting the status of neutrality with Finland-like assurances that it will not let its territory be used offensively against Russia. Biden should also propose that the arms-control treaties trashed by Bush II and Trump will be reinstated in talks with Russia.

Russia, of course, should pledge to leave Ukraine and offer compensation, while the heavily ethnic Russian areas in the east are given the freedom to join Russia.

We need not be at war -- even if it's a new cold war -- with Russia.

Damn!

Vladimir Putin's invasion and bombing of Ukraine deserve the condemnation of all decent people. Regardless of what has been going on over there, Putin did not have to do it. He had a moral obligation to deal with the issues properly. His actions cannot be excused.

Why Provoke Putin?

No one I know who criticizes America's post-Cold War policy toward Russia -- including the U.S. position on Ukraine -- thinks Vladimir Putin is a good guy. Indeed, the case against U.S. bellicosity toward Russia in no way depends on a favorable view of the Russian ruler. On the contrary, it is because Putin is who he is (an aggrieved nationalist) and because of Russia's place in history that the U.S. policy of ignoring, when not belittling, Russia's security concerns is so dangerous. Russia's history -- including multiple invasions from the west -- is what it is, and that huge nuclear power isn't going anywhere, no matter what America's warmongers would like. Neither are its neighbors going to relocate anytime soon. So a regional modus vivendi is imperative. If the U.S. government continues to stand in the way -- remember the U.S.-backed coup against the elected Ukrainian government in 2014 and the repeated eastward expansion of NATO since the Cold War -- it is an agent of war, not peace.

See Peter Hitchens's take.

TGIF: Joe Biden, Let's Not Go to War with Russia

Here's a good idea: let's not go to war against Russia. Let's not even rattle a saber at Russia (or China, for that matter) because even wars that no one really wants can be blundered into. Many losers would be left in the aftermath, even if nuclear weapons were kept out of sight, but no one would win. So as that smart Defense Department computer says in the 1983 movie WarGames, "The only winning move is not to play."

The crisis du jour is Ukraine; before that, it was Georgia, both former Soviet republics. For some inexplicable reason, Russia's rulers get nervous when the U.S. foreign policy elite treats Russian historical security concerns as of no consequence. Could it have something to do with the several invasions of Russia through Eastern Europe in the past? Jeez, from the way the irrational Russians behave, you'd think their American counterparts never invoked U.S. security concerns (usually bogus) as a reason for military action. As if...

But maybe it is time for America's rulers to take Russian worries into consideration. Even for those of us who are no fans of Vladimir Putin and the government he runs, this seems like good advice – if for no other reason than narrow American self-interest. At least, that's how it looks from the view of regular Americans, who might appreciate for a change what Adam Smith described as "peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice."

Anyone who has paid attention to U.S. foreign policy since the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact alliance, 1989-91, would realize that America's bipartisan foreign-policy elite has taken precisely the wrong tack by baiting nervous Russian nationalists at every turn. Despite promises to the contrary, that elite has led the charge to add members to the NATO alliance, taking the anti-Soviet military and political organization right up to the Russian border and staging military exercises uncomfortably close. The U.S. has also sold weapons systems to NATO-member Poland, formerly a member of the Warsaw Pact.

Putin insists that NATO not expand any further, but Biden told him to shut up. The U.S. position is that NATO's inclusion of former Soviet possessions is purely an alliance affair. Meanwhile, Biden threatens more harsh economic sanctions and even more U.S. troops to Eastern Europe if Putin doesn't acquiesce by, among other things, moving his troops away from the Russia-Ukraine border

Let's also recall that in 2014 the U.S. stood behind a neo-Nazi-supported coup against an elected, Russian-friendly president in Ukraine, knowing full well how the Russians would react. Fearing U.S./NATO encroachment, Putin's government annexed Crimea with its strategic warm-water Black Sea naval base, which has been part of the Russian security system for over 200 years. Nevertheless, and most relevant to today's heightened tensions, Putin declined an opportunity to annex eastern Ukraine (the Donbass region full of ethnic Russians ) when a majority there voted for independence from Kiev.

You didn't have to know too much about European history to see how provocative the U.S.-sponsored regime change in Ukraine would be. To make matters worse, Ukraine and Georgia have become de facto NATO members, but only because the U.S. elite has not yet convinced its European counterparts to give those two former Soviet republics official membership. That, however, hasn't stopped Washington from extending a security guarantee to Ukraine that is all too much like the one that NATO members extend to one another. Biden has just reinforced that guarantee.

Which Americans are ready to die for Kiev?

For some reason it's easy for Americans, who can be as nationalistically self-centered as anyone, to assume that any ratcheting up of tensions with Russia must be the Russians' fault. The establishment media have no problem presenting this as an indisputable fact. But how do they know it's true? They never furnish evidence. Foreign-policy expert Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute has a much more evidence-bound take:

Moscow’s behavior has been more a reaction to aggressive moves that the United States and its Ukrainian client have already taken than it is evidence of offensive intent. Russian leaders have viewed the steady expansion of NATO’s membership and military presence eastward toward Russia’s border since the late 1990s suspiciously and they have considered Washington’s growing strategic love affair with Kiev as especially provocative.

Moreover, Carpenter adds,

Ukraine’s own policies have become dangerously bellicose. The government’s official security doctrine adopted earlier this year, for example, focuses on retaking Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 following the West’s campaign that helped demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russian president. Statements by President Volodymyr Zelensky and other leaders have been disturbingly bellicose, and Ukraine’s own military deployments have further destabilized an already fragile situation.

Carpenter points out that while the United States is far more powerful than Russia in conventional terms, "unless the United States and its allies are willing to wage an all-out war against Russia, an armed conflict confined to Ukraine (and perhaps some adjacent territories), would diminish much of that advantage. Russian forces would be operating close to home, with relatively short supply and communications lines. US forces would be operating far from home with extremely stressed lines. In other words, there is no certainty that the US would prevail in such a conflict."

Would the Biden administration then back down or go nuclear? Who is eager to find out?

Those considerations aside, the U.S. government should simply stop fanning the Russophobic flames simply because a war would be incredibly stupid.

TGIF: War Over Ukraine?

Who wants to go to war against Russia in defense of Ukraine over the Kerch Strait, which lies between the Black and Azov seas and between Russia’s Taman Peninsula and Russian-annexed Crimea? 

A show of hands, please.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Trump and Putin – How about Getting Rid of Your Nukes?

The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.

--"It's Two Minutes to Midnight," Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

I, for one, was much disappointed by the Trump-Putin summit -- but not for the reasons most others were. I was not hoping that Trump would punch Putin in the nose or insult him or declare new sanctions. Nor was I hoping he would cancel the meeting.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

And the Award for the Worst Puppeteer Ever Goes to ...

Vladimir Putin.

The Presumption of Innocence: Not Just for the Courtroom

Journalist Peter Hitchens wrote the following in the connection with the events in Salisbury, England, involving a former Russian double agent and his daughter, but it is worth keeping in mind always:

The presumption of innocence is not just a great liberty and defence against state power. It can also help investigators avoid the obvious conclusion, and carry on pursuing other lines of inquiry which might otherwise escape attention.

After all, isn’t the point of almost every detective story we read and see on the TV that the police tend to arrest the obvious suspect, and it is hardly ever the right one? As Sherlock Holmes used to say, as he began work with his magnifying glass, and his clients pressed him for an instant verdict ‘It is a capital error to theorise without data’. Also, it is amazing how wrong the obvious solution can be. I take the opportunity, yet again, to urge everyone to read Josephine Tey’s severely brilliant novel ‘the Franchise Affair’, in which dogged, sceptical inquiry reveals that something apparently impossible is true, and that the obvious, unpopular suspects in a crime are (in that particular case) wholly innocent of it. Once you have read it you will never view a criminal case or trial in the same way.

Trump, Putin, Sisi, Salman, and Netanyahu

If Trump were being criticized merely for ignoring Putin's authoritarian rule when Trump speaks about him -- and not for Trump's wish for detente -- I would have no objection. Of course, to be consistent, his critics would also have to fault Trump for how he talks about Sisi, Netanyahu, and wise King Salman.

TGIF: How to Spite Putin

I don't think the Russian government meddled in the 2016 presidential election. But maybe I'm wrong. What to do? I have an idea. It's so clever and foolproof that I'm surprised no one in the ruling elite and its mass media has thought of it.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Let's All Calm Down about Russia

I can understand why the ruling elite, broadly conceived to include the intel bureaucracy and the military-industrial complex, has an interest in positing Russia as our enemy. The reasons are obvious enough. What I can't understand is why common Americans would fall for it. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain from swallowing this line.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

Cohen Nails it on Putin and Trump

TGIF: Obama's Iraqi Fairy Tale

One need not condone Vladimir Putin’s ham-handedness to see that Obama has no leg to stand on when he contrasts Russia’s essentially bloodless and provoked annexation of Crimea with America’s unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq. Unfortunately, the Americans who committed this cold-blooded mass murder and societal destruction are less likely to face justice than Putin is for his crimes in, say,Chechnya.

Read the full TGIF.

Well, Mr. Obama?

Vladimir Putin acknowledges that Russia has been an empire Why can't Barack Obama do the same for America?