Silly Goofs Bush and Biden in Ukraine
John Mearsheimer, in his searing lecture The causes and consequences of the Ukraine war (see Mearsheimer) on June 16, makes the critical connection between the current crisis and George W. Bush.
If you remember, Bush was the one who continued to read stories about goats to children after being told about 9/11. Yes, you do remember that still immensely under-investigated, monumental tragic start of the misnamed War on Terror. It should of course be the War OF Terror against Everyone we don't like, as enshrined the following year in the “Bush doctrine” (i.e. Mafia threat) by which the US once again grants itself the right to attack anyone who competes against it, anywhere, by pre-emptive war if necessary (and I don’t think it would be difficult to slip in the word “nuclear” somewhere around there).
This was the policy that Bush and his henchpersons, the odious Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, with some help from the NYT’s Judith Miller, implemented against Iraq in 2003, though went further than the Bush doctrine with an unstated clause: pre-emptive war on the basis of entirely made-up pretext.
As though the silly goof (or monstrous vermin, which is it to be?) had not done enough damage at that point, in 2008 the Bush administration ignored Vladimir’s fury at the NATO Bucharest meeting to which Vlad had been kindly invited and at which it was announced that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO. Putin warned then that were such a thing to happen, Ukraine would find itself without Crimea and much of the Black Sea. Why? Because Russia considered that Ukrainian neutrality was of existential importance to Russia, just as the US Monroe Doctrine insists that it is in the US existential interest that no hostile power should be allowed to place its forces in the western hemisphere.
Merkel (German premier) and the obnoxious (subsequently imprisoned?) Sarkozy found Putin’s position to be eminently predictable, if not reasonable, but under Washington pressure signed off on the Bucharest agreement in any case. The US ambassador to Ukraine at the time (and subsequent head of the CIA), William Burns, also recognized the political reality and authenticity of Putin’s argument advising Condi Rice Putin would consider Ukraine membership of NATO an act or war. As if to emphasize the relevance of this point, US pressure on Georgia incited a war only four months later, when Georgia moved its troops against Russian enclave South Ossetia. The war was quickly won by Russia.
Mearsheimer takes pains to critique claims that Russian involvement in Ukraine is imperial in nature although I am not sure that he rejects the possibility that, given the West’s malignant role in the conflict, Russian aims may (we cannot know) have become more imperial than they were. To support his argument he notes that no serious strategist could claim that the size of Russia’s special military operation force was remotely near the size necessary to subdue a population of 40 million. Russia also knows that given the Soviet experience with its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe (granted it by Roosevelt and Churchill in 1944 at Yalta) and then later in Afghanistan, colonization is a source of never-ending trouble that nobody in their right mind should ever contemplate. Further, Putin would have known the power of Ukrainian nationalism (especially in the West of Ukraine).
Had Putin possessed a remotely imperial mindset he would simply have enveloped the Donbass in 2014 in face of fascist aggression against pro-Russian peoples there (eventually to cause 14,000 lives), especially given that only half of the Ukraine population as a whole supported the anti-democratic revolution of Euromaidan and that in the East opposition to Euromaidan ran as high as 75-90%. But Putin did respect the fact that newly formed independent republics of Luhansk and Dontesk, however sympathetic to Russia they may have been, were primarily seeking greater autonomy within a more federal Ukraine, precisely the aim that was endorsed by Europe, Russia and Ukraine in the Minsk agreements of 2014, and 2015, and that have been reneged upon first by Poroshenko and then by Zelenskiy under pressure from the Right Sektor fascist militia and their ilk, and probably by Washington and Brussels. Had Putin any imperial ambitions would he not have demonstrated these somewhere between his accession to power in 2000, and Euromaidan in 2014, or between 2014 and 2022?
Mearsheimer’s speech usefully amplifies the history of the run-up to the Russian invasion of Feb 24 2022. Nothing could have been more predictable. Which may explain US intelligence’s unusual prescience in predicting it. A year before, in June 2021, Ukraine collaborated with NATO exercise Operation Sea Breeze clearly aimed at Russia and involving 31 countries, all designed to enhance NATO’s '“inter-operability.” NATO has been training Ukraine military since 2014. What could be more provocative? Putin told NATO that Russia was categorically opposed to NATO membership for Ukraine, and complained about the western flow of arms into Ukraine, which clearly preceded the current conflict. We also know that Putin in December last year demanded assurances that NATO would not admit Ukraine, that Ukraine would remain neutral, and that offensive missiles would not be placed on Ukrainian soil. No reassurances were forthcoming from Washington. Silly Billy Blinken merely asserted that “there is no change, there will be no change." We further know that days before the Russian invasion the Ukrainian army greatly increased its artillery charge on the people’s republics of the Donbass
The war has been an unmitigated disaster for Ukraine (and my recent posts supply plenty of evidence for this truth). Mearsheimer mentions the 6 million Ukrainian refugees and the 8 million internally displaced and notes that this year the country’s economy is predicted to shrink by 50%. $100 billion worth of damage has occurred and it would require $1 trillion to rebuild. The Ukrainian government needs a subsidy from the West of $5 billion a month just in order for the government to keep going. Black Sea exports have all but stopped.
Mearsheimer sees no prospects for negotiation. The war will go on for a very long time because both sides are deeply committed to winning it. There is also a tendency for protracted wars to escalate. Escalation can definitely include nuclearization. Indeed the closer the West gets to winning the war, the more likely is it that Russia will resort to nuclear weapons, and vice versa.
Mearsheimer blames the US and NATO for this terrible situation and is sure that history (assuming there are still human being around to write history) will judge them very harshly. He did not, in his lecture, touch on the enormous further complication of China and the BRICS. On this subject one might indeed be inclined to see more positive outcomes arising from concerted Chinese and Indian pressure on Washington to recover its sanity. Brazil under Bolsonara, on the other hand, is a complete and evil joke, of course, but unless he both plays a Trump and gets away with it (and he might), the infinitely more intelligent Lula will be in power.
(Please note that my postings may be somewhat more erratic than usual over the next week)