"The first casualty when war comes is truth"
Stop with the pretense that everything done is out of benevolence.
It can be frustrating to see how easily the public’s opinion and perspective on geopolitical affairs can be shaped by friendly regime media. Not only with regards to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, but American foreign policy in general. Too many accept the caricatured portrayal of one side being an absolute hero while the other is the evil villain as if out of a Disney cartoon.
It was surprising to run across this article from the Los Angeles Times. Published in 2016, the author of the piece lays out a balanced description of the situation in the region without resorting to useless Ad Hominem fallacy attacks.
Op-Ed: “Russia’s got a point: The U.S. broke a NATO promise.”
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal--20160530-snap-story.html
From the article:
“Moscow solidified its hold on Crimea in April, outlawing the Tatar legislature that had opposed Russia’s annexation of the region since 2014. Together with Russian military provocations against NATO forces in and around the Baltic, this move seems to validate the observations of Western analysts who argue that under Vladimir Putin, an increasingly aggressive Russia is determined to dominate its neighbors and menace Europe.
Leaders in Moscow, however, tell a different story. For them, Russia is the aggrieved party. They claim the United States has failed to uphold a promise that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, a deal made during the 1990 negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union over German unification. In this view, Russia is being forced to forestall NATO’s eastward march as a matter of self-defense.”
NATO Training of the Ukraine forces has been an open secret over the last decade. Let’s imagine a Chinese military presence in Mexico setting up shop and training the Mexican armed forces for ‘training’ purposes within sight of the US doorstep. How would we view that? Were that to happen, it would be seen as an open provocation against the US. There would be a waiting line for politicians to get on news networks to denounce the Chinese and calls for action.
“…It’s therefore not surprising that Russia was incensed when Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and others were ushered into NATO membership starting in the mid-1990s. Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Gorbachev himself protested through both public and private channels that U.S. leaders had violated the non-expansion arrangement. As NATO began looking even further eastward, to Ukraine and Georgia, protests turned to outright aggression and saber-rattling.
NATO’S widening umbrella doesn’t justify Putin’s bellicosity or his incursions in Ukraine or Georgia. Still, the evidence suggests that Russia’s protests have merit and that U.S. policy has contributed to current tensions in Europe.
To pretend that the events over the last year were all created in a bubble is disingenuous at best. The advance of NATO, a Cold War strategy of deterrence against the USSR, is now being used by the United States to further its own foreign policy goals. It is becoming harder to view today’s version of NATO as nothing more than another arm of the US Department of Defense to be used in American foreign interests.
In less than two months, Western heads of state will gather in Warsaw for a NATO summit. Discussions will undoubtedly focus on efforts to contain and deter Russian adventurism — including increasing NATO deployments in Eastern Europe and deepening NATO’s ties to Ukraine and Georgia. Such moves, however, will only reinforce the Russian narrative of U.S. duplicity. Instead, addressing a major source of Russian anxieties by taking future NATO expansion off the table could help dampen Russia-Western hostilities.”
The current Ukraine-Russia situation reflects that these warnings were not heeded as we now find ourselves in a proxy Western war with Russia. Almost daily it appears that escalation and stoking the conflict instead of diplomacy rules the day.
As we advance into the 21st century, the reality of a multipolar world must be accepted. To continue the mindset of a post-WWII geopolitical landscape is folly. Realpolitik requires sane and serious contemplation on the direction and results that could occur.
Links:
Russia’s got a point: The U.S. broke a NATO promise
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal--20160530-snap-story.html
The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years of NATO Training
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-military-success-years-of-nato-training-11649861339
Training Ukrainian troops in the U.S. signals major ambitions
https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/01/17/ukraine-fort-sill-patriot-missiletraining/