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Debate of US culpability in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict [1]
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Date: 2022-11-16
I ran across this debate of US culpability in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict. It is the first detail discussion I have come across, so I am sharing it. (These are my excerpts, the entirety of the two articles from “Russia Matters” are linked below.)
June 23, 2022
John J. Mearsheimer
“I will make two main arguments today.
First, the United States is principally responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis. This is not to deny that Putin started the war and that he is responsible for Russia’s conduct of the war. Nor is it to deny that America’s allies bear some responsibility, but they largely follow Washington’s lead on Ukraine. My central claim is that the United States has pushed forward policies toward Ukraine that Putin and other Russian leaders see as an existential threat, a point they have made repeatedly for many years. Specifically, I am talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. The Biden administration was unwilling to eliminate that threat through diplomacy and indeed in 2021 recommitted the United States to bringing Ukraine into NATO. Putin responded by invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 of this year.
Second, the Biden administration has reacted to the outbreak of war by doubling down against Russia. Washington and its Western allies are committed to decisively defeating Russia in Ukraine and employing comprehensive sanctions to greatly weaken Russian power. The United States is not seriously interested in finding a diplomatic solution to the war, which means the war is likely to drag on for months if not years. In the process, Ukraine, which has already suffered grievously, is going to experience even greater harm. In essence, the United States is helping lead Ukraine down the primrose path. Furthermore, there is a danger that the war will escalate, as NATO might get dragged into the fighting and nuclear weapons might be used. We are living in perilous times.”
July 29, 2022
Joe Cirincione
NATO Policies Didn’t Trigger the Ukraine War
“The key driver of NATO expansion was one that I underestimated and that Mearsheimer specifically ignores: Eastern Europeans wanted protection from a historic foe. They pushed to join NATO; America did not pull them into an anti-Russian pact. Centuries of invasions instilled a genuine fear of Russia into their collective memories. Putin’s numerous nuclear threats since the beginning of the war remind all that however weakened Russia’s army may be by its battles in Ukraine, its nuclear weapons can destroy any nation it targets.
Similarly, if other former Soviet republics recognized the realist logic of great power spheres of influence, they would join Russia in resisting this plot to expand Western rule into all of Europe and beyond. But they don’t. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have all refused to support Putin’s invasion and to recognize the breakaway Donbas republics Russia wants to annex. Despite their deep ties with Russia—or, perhaps, because of them—their fear of Russian ambitions is growing. As one Central Asian official said to the Wall Street Journal, “Will we be next?”
Putin’s Aims
“But Russia itself provides the rebuttal. In late July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said outright that Moscow’s goal was to free Ukraine’s people from the “unacceptable regime” in Kyiv. He was following Putin’s lead. On June 9, Putin gave a speech on the war where he did not say one word about NATO or NATO enlargement but did wax eloquent about his similarity to Tsar Peter the Great, whose war with Sweden, he said, was justly “returning” land to Russia. “Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well,” he said. Hardly a defensive goal. Already, in occupied parts of Ukraine, Russian-backed administrators are introducing rubles as a new currency, handing out Russian passports, hoisting the Russian flag, taking over cell phone service and media and trying to re-educate teachers and children with new, pro-Russian versions of reality.”
“This focus on controlling the people and narratives in Ukraine hints at the second variable Mearsheimer ignores in his construct: Putin has long feared that popular resistance to his increasingly authoritarian rule at home would spread if Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics grew too close to the West. Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul pointed this out (correctly, in my view) when he faulted Mearsheimer in 2014 for not looking at the whole picture. “Russian foreign policy did not grow more aggressive in response to U.S. policies,” McFaul wrote. “It changed as a result of Russian internal political dynamics.””
Power to Ukraine!!!
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/16/2136703/-Debate-of-US-culpability-in-the-ongoing-Ukraine-Russia-conflict
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