The Peace Press — Wednesday, March 2, 2022 edition
Since my last published post, some people have vigorously complained that my criticisms of Vladimir Putin are insufficient. Although I strongly disagree with the active demonization of foreign leaders, to allay those criticisms, let me make one criticism now — — — — I think the Russian Establishment represented in part by Vladimir Putin waited far too long to stand-up and challenge the international Imperialist bully of the United States American Empire. In fairness, I admit that I am more anti-Imperialist than anti-war but I am still very much antiwar too. I am also more committed to the raw truth as I see it than warm-and-fuzzy feel good politics and what I am about to say will likely irk some in the antiwar movement but too bad. The Russian Establishment, of which Putin is a member, invaded Ukraine and, contrary to what you hear on mass media, this was a rational, thoughtful policy based on years of careful formulation. The U.S.-American Empire has been pushing Russia around for too long, waging soft wars on her borders, encircling her with nations by urging them to join an aggressive military alliance (NATO), installing an oligarchy in Russia originally beholden to Wall Street under Yelstin that financially screwed the Russian people, withdrawing from missile treaties signed in good faith, encircling her borders with nuclear missile attack silos, conducting provocative military exercises near Russian borders annually, overthrowing democratically elected governments and installing hostile-to-Russia type of governments on her borders, conducting a multi-pronged array of aggressive actions with the aim of regime change in Moscow and generally acting with impunity and waging these kinds of soft wars against Russia for years. A Rand corporation study commissioned for the Pentagon in 2019 even calls for regime change operations against Russia by finding a myriad of ways to provoke Russia into responding, as they now have, to turn the public against Russia. So the harsh reality is that the U.S.-American Empire is the primary aggressor in this crisis and the Russians finally responded in kind, albeit an aggressive response but one that is at its root fundamentally defensive, through military action. The situation in Ukraine exemplifies the blend of diarrhea and vomit that best characterizes the ridiculous notion of American Exceptionalism — -it is ok when we do it but not ok when other nations do it.
If the Russian Establishment had intervened on behalf of the Donbas territories in 2014 as the vast majority of ethnically-Russian Ukrainian citizens there wanted Russia to do, then perhaps the 14,000 people killed in Ukraine in the Donbas by the neo-Nazi elements of Ukrainian government at that time, could have been averted. This occurred as a result of the U.S. instigated coup that enabled neo-Nazi elements. If all these actions I have described above do not qualify as acts of war, then I don’t know what does. So after many years of our waging war on Ukraine and taking aggressive actions on nations bordering Russia, the Russians finally responded with their own reactive war in response. What the U.S. does in the world is called Imperialism and what the Russians are doing, albeit illegally, is called a regional sphere of influence and there is huge difference between these two thing and only a moron doesn’t see it. Indeed two wrongs do not make a right. But, with that said, I think the Russian Establishment represented in part by Putin should have stood up to American Imperialist bullying and our soft proxy wars near Russian borders long before he did. If he had, perhaps 14,000 lives in the Donbas could have been saved. There, now I have criticized him and I hope you are satisfied. With that said, I hope the situation can be resolved peacefully through diplomacy with minimal loss of life.
As far as the throngs of peace activists who have suddenly emerged from the woodwork, I think what we are actually witnessing is not a newfound flowering for the love of peace and peacemaking by the masses, no, what we are actually seeing is the effects of mass propaganda upon a population– a kind of propaganda has been cultivated for years, notably by such priming events like the Russiagate hoax. My question is where were these people when the Ukrainian government was using some of its neo-Nazi elememts to slaughter Ukrainian citizens in the Donbas? Where were they when the U.S. was waging soft war against Russia in Ukraine for the last 8 or more years? They were nowhere to be found. Why are these newfound masses of peace activists so loud and outraged in their opposition to Russia yet barely utter any objection to the far more deadly and far more severe war in Yemen? So one must ask, are these people genuinely lovers of peace or are they actually haters of Russia and Putin — — victims of incessant, long-standing Russophobic propaganda?. Is this why some of them are more interested in calling people like me nasty names for my failure to conform (social conformity helps validate their views) and for my being the skunk at the party offering nuanced views and asking difficult questions. That is not welcome amongst those who desperately, fanatically wish never to think for themselves since they fanatically cling to certainty over truth and cling to fairytales composed of good and evil.
Also, in relation to the call from the wider antiwar movement regarding Russian troop withdrawals from Ukraine, again I adopt a slightly more nuanced view than the wider anti-war movement. Russian troops should be withdrawn from most of Ukraine, however, not from the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine at least until after an agreement is reached to protect citizens of the Donbas and/or give them the democratic option of either political autonomy from Ukraine and/or uniting their territory with greater Russia. Until that happens, Russian troops should NOT be withdrawn from Eastern Ukraine because they are needed to protect the human rights of the ethnic-Russian population that resides there in the Donbas who are under contant threat by the Ukrainian government and a few of their neo-Nazi units, some rogue, some not. Is not withdrawing Russian troops fully a violation of international law? Yes, it is but it is also the lesser of two evils. While international laws are normally just and worthy of obedience, they must also exhibit some small measure of flexibility so as not to be too rigid and inflexible that they are devoid of human justice in rare, special circumstances such as this situation. On very rare occasions such laws may need to be bent or twisted to ensure justice, unfortunately. Any law anywhere that lacks justice is a law unworthy of obedience. Laws must just and be flexible enough to account for special, rare circumstances that cry out for human justice. The human rights of the residents of the Donbas should be protected and since Russian troops are the only force that can protect them on the ground now, then those troops should remain in place until a political arrangement is formally established.
Those who claim to be for peace and against war should generally refrain from demonizing foreign leaders. The demonization of any foreign leader is the first step to creating a binary Manichean construct where the person being demonized becomes the embodiment of evil and that ultimately paves the path to war by helping justify military intervention, us good versus them evil. What type of government the Russians or the Chinese or any nation lives under is no business of any American or any other persons except those who live under that government. When our government uses our tax dollars to fund any such government, then it becomes our business. Every foreign leader, simply for being a statesman and representative of their nation alone deserves a minimum modicum level of respect. Successful diplomacy requires such displays of respect.
The first step in any worthwhile diplomatic effort is to demonstrate some basic modicum of respect with whom you engage. Russian security concerns are valid. Separately, Vladimir Putin, as the President of Russia deserves to be treated with a basic modicum of respect inherent to his elected role in Russia. We don’t have to agree with his decisions and we may criticize his policy actions but we should still be personally respectful of any statesman. In the interest of demonstrating respect, any personal demonization of another statesman should always be categorically avoided. The second step in any worthwhile diplomatic effort is to listen. Russian security concerns are valid, worth listening to and worth addressing. These security concerns are about a nation, its people and their right to live in relative security. These are legitimate concerns that are not about any one person but about an entire nation and its people. The third step in any worthwhile diplomatic effort is to seek to understand. This third step is related to the second step but yet different too. After patiently and respectfully listening to other parties’ concerns, one must seek to understand not only what other parties say but why they say it. One must seek to understand, comprehend, see it from their perspective and sympathize (not necessarily agree but only sympathize) with the views of another party. The fourth step in any worthwhile diplomatic effort is to be honest yet respectful in expressing your own concerns in a careful and delicate manner seeking to avoid giving offense. The fifth step in any worthwhile diplomatic effort is to seek and find areas of common ground between engaged parties. Identifying any issue of common concern, no matter how small or seemingly trivial, is the best way to begin to achieve a common consensus. In listening to the concerns of others, seeking to understand their concerns, expressing one’s own concerns, finding the nexus between them, each party enables themself to then seek a resolution that addresses the concerns of all.
Is this process easy? Of course not. But, given the typical alternative, it is the more ideal path to achieving a common resolution. How do I know? Ultimately, all diplomacy is about is common sense and elementary human relations. Most, if not all, human beings engage in some level of diplomacy at some point in their lives. Most, if not all, are diplomats at some level or another. This is part of being human. Being human is one way we are all alike — — -ahhh, and there it is, the first way we are alike and share common ground together. Being human is our fundamental common ground and thus the basis of all diplomacy. We are all experienced diplomats, some more seasoned and skilled than others.
“As the West is sucked deeper into the Syrian conflict and starts a new Cold War with Russia, the mainstream news media has collapsed as a vehicle for reliable information, creating a danger for the world, writes Robert Parry.”
“Does any intelligent person look at a New York Times article about Russia or Vladimir Putin these days and expect to read an objective, balanced account? Or will it be laced with a predictable blend of contempt and ridicule? And is it any different at The Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC, CNN or almost any mainstream U.S. news outlet?”
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/17/the-danger-of-demonization/
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“In 2015 and 2017, the Watchdog Media Institute released a 22-part video series on Maidan and Kiev’s war on ethnic Russians. Watch the summary 25-minute film and the entire series here.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/27/watch-the-war-in-ukraine/
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“The point is, however, that these goals are now overwhelmingly focused on Ukraine. Nobody in Moscow now appears to believe that there is any possibility of an agreement with NATO on conventional arms limitation, or on some form of new European security architecture. The most that can be hoped for by Moscow is a Cold War-style treaty on nuclear arms reductions, and perhaps some agreement on cybersecurity. When the Russian government decided to invade Ukraine, it chose to accept that relations with the West would be basically hostile for a long time to come.
The Russian government aims to establish a Russian sphere of influence, not a new version of the Soviet Union. Putin has stated that “whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, but whoever wants it back has no brain.” The Eurasian Union falls vastly far short of the USSR.”
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/02/25/what-does-russia-have-mind-next-ukraine
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“Nothing justifies the Russian invasion, but there is a more insidious reality at work beneath the surface of this classic morality play, and that is the role of the United States and NATO in setting the stage for this crisis.
President Biden has called the Russian invasion “unprovoked,” but that is far from the truth.”
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“Major American media outlets oppose military aggression… unless the United States is doing it.” (or when our allies are doing it as in Yemen)
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/02/28/so-what-it-looks-when-corporate-media-opposes-war
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“The active military force and aggression since 1991 has been the United States. Rejecting mutual disarmament of the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO, there was no “peace dividend.” Instead, the U.S. policy executed by the Clinton and subsequent administrations to wage a new military expansion via NATO has paid a 30-year dividend in the form of shifting the foreign policy of Western Europe and other American allies out of their domestic political sphere into their own U.S.-oriented “national security” blob (the word for special interests that must not be named). NATO has become Europe’s foreign-policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.
The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maiden regime was aimed at (and has succeeded in0 forcing a showdown in response the fear by U.S. interests that they are losing their economic and political hold on their NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites as these countries have seen their major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/01/america-defeats-germany-for-the-third-time-in-a-century/
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“Scott Ritter says the Russian president is working from a 2007 playbook, when he warned European leaders of the need for a new security framework to replace the system built by the U.S. and NATO. “
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/02/putin-crazy-like-a-fox/
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“The best way to help the people of Ukraine is to ignore the war promoters and choose the path of negotiation — for their sake and, with nuclear missiles on both sides of the Atlantic, for ours.”
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/01/cold-open-ukraine-and-conscience-left
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“If the war can be stopped, new efforts will be needed to ensure that Europe seeks security not in a new arms race, but in a new effort to build the structures of peace.”
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/01/we-need-massive-push-peace-ukraine-now
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“When the Bush Administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense. NATO itself made no sense.”
https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2022/02/28/it-all-comes-back-to-nato/
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US-Russian joint tactical victory, European and Ukrainian defeat
“Celebrations have been taking place in the self-declared Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in what is almost universally recognized Ukraine. Having declared independence eight years ago, events have now forced Russia’s hand in which these two nascent entities are now recognized by Moscow, with all the protections that come with it. One cannot help but
understand why these people are celebrating.
Another celebration is taking place in the USA. The State Department has achieved its main objective of seeing Nordstream 2 put on ice. American LNG producers are now popping champagne bottles as they can envision huge stacks of cash to be made by overcharging Europeans desperate for gas. The Military-Industrial Complex is chuffed as well, as the arms will continue to pour into Ukraine and into the NATO armies in its periphery.
How did we get here?“
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/fuck-it-russias-final-break-with?utm_source=url
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“Five years after the Maidan uprising, anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant.”
“These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.
Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
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“The Atlantic Council report was little more than a press release for Azov, written by a reporter who embedded inside the neo-Nazi militia, reports Ben Norton.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/28/atlantic-council-praised-ukraines-nazi-azov-battalion/
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“Every useful or pleasing claim about the war, no matter how unverified or subsequently debunked, rapidly spreads, while dissenters are vilified as traitors or Kremlin agents.”
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/war-propaganda-about-ukraine-becoming?utm_source=url
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“News about the Ukraine crisis has in large part degenerated into propaganda. It is a confrontation between good and evil, between the simple hobbit-folk of the Shire against the dark lord of Mordor plotting to end their freedom and rule the world. Any suggestion the other side might have real grievances is ignored.
These grievances may be exaggerated and the Russian response to them mistaken or wrong, but they need to be taken seriously if the crisis is ever to end.
Russia says, for instance, that it is threatened by Nato expanding eastwards and potentially including Ukraine as a member.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/
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Western propaganda in a nutshell:
“You’re not allowed to talk about the known US/NATO/Ukraine actions which experts have been warning for many years would lead us to where we’re at. You’re only allowed to say Putin attacked Ukraine completely unprovoked, in a vacuum, solely because he is evil and hates freedom.”
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“With U.S.-Russia tension boiling over after Russia entered Ukraine’s 8-year civil war and on Sunday put its nuclear arsenal on alert, we reprint this dire warning from Robert Parry in March 2015.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/28/robert-parry-playing-chicken-with-nuclear-war-over-ukraine/
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This is a step in the correct direction — diplomacy is the best way to resolve this crisis. But a complete Russian withdrawal should also hinge upon giving the residents of the Donbas the option of uniting with Russia. Their human rights and self-determination, both threatened by the Ukrainian government, matter too. In the interest of peace, perhaps Ukraine should be partitioned in two — — the Eastern ethnically Russian region and Western Ukraine with its blend of disparate political groups including neo-Nazis.
“Numerous US foreign policy experts warned for more than 2 decades about the mounting dangers associated with NATO’s decision to expand eastward toward Russia. Their warnings went unheeded, and Ukrainians are now paying the price in treasure and blood. Meanwhile, stunned NATO leaders stand on the sidelines wringing their hands and posturing about “allied unity” in imposing (probably ineffectual) economic sanctions against Russia.”
https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Galen_Carpenter/2022/02/28/the-finland-option-may-still-save-ukraine/
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“Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia. Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine.
In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017. Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria — the list is endless.”
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“The more tense things get, the greater the likelihood of an unthinkable chain of events from which there is no coming back.”
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Who benefits from war once again? The Pentagon and its exceedingly high budgets increase your taxes and deprive you of needed safety-net services thus doing this country more harm than good.
“On Friday, the White House asked Congress for $6.4 billion for military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine and to help US allies in Europe to bolster their security in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.”
https://news.antiwar.com/2022/02/25/white-house-asks-congress-for-6-4-billion-for-ukraine-crisis/
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The following article appeals to people’s human sensitivities and love for idealistic fairy-tales but also lacks some semblance of reality in a harsh world. Let us remember that the vast majority of 6 million Jews in WW2 practiced non-violence all the way up to being gassed and burned in the concentration camps of the Holocast. If Mahatma Gandhi had been born at a different time and place, say in Poland to a Jewish family in 1910, and had preached the principles of non-violence all his life, he would been rounded up with all the other Jews, sent to the Auschwitz, murdered and the world would have never heard of Gandhi. So let us be clear, non-violence is highly preferred and the best choice when there are available good and evil choices, but when the choices reside between more evil and less evil, or stated another way, between more violent and less violent, then the less violent means becomes the preferred course of action.
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“The invasion of Ukraine would, I expect, never have happened if these promises had been kept. Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed, and angry. But to understand is not to condone. The invasion of Ukraine, under post-Nuremberg laws, is a criminal war of aggression.
[Ed.: Russia says it intervened in the eight-year civil war in Ukraine to stop the massacre of ethnic Russians in Donbass led in part by openly neo-Nazi units.]
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The bellicose rhetoric embraced and amplified by the American press, demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and elevating the Ukrainians to the status of demigods, demanding more robust military intervention along with the crippling sanctions meant to bring down Vladimir Putin’s government, is infantile and dangerous. The Russian media narrative is as simplistic as ours.“
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/01/chris-hedges-the-greatest-evil/
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“Many foreign policy experts and peace advocates have called for ending the anachronistic alliance ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But NATO remains and has only encroached toward Russia further, resulting in new NATO countries — bristling with NATO arms systems — right on Russia’s borders.
Russia sees that expansion — and its integration of neighboring countries into U.S.-led military partnerships — as a continuing threat. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. But in the past the U.S. and other NATO members have urged its acceptance, and Russia regards Ukraine’s drift toward the West as a precursor to membership.
None of that makes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine legal, legitimate, or necessary. President Biden was right when he called Russia’s war “unjustified.” But he was wrong when he said it was “unprovoked.” It’s not condoning Putin’s invasion to observe there certainly was provocation — not so much by Ukraine, but by the United States.“
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“The history of U.S. involvement in Ukraine is rarely analyzed by corporate media. The desire to open Ukraine to finance capital, the 2014 U.S. backed coup, and the drive to expand NATO all played a role in creating the current crisis.”
https://www.blackagendareport.com/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukraine
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“Even often hawkish New York Times columnists — Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens made this point this week about the brazen U.S. history of military hypocrisy while tearing into Putin. Stephens brought up the Monroe Doctrine over the entire Western Hemisphere, in raising repeatedly the question, “Who are We?”
The chess game between Russia and the West has become more deadly with Putin’s military moves followed by immediate Western sanctions against some Russian banks and oligarchs close to Putin. Travel bans and freezing the completion of the second major natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany are in place with promises of much more severe economic retaliation by Biden.
These sanctions can become a two-way street. Western Europe needs Russian oil and gas, Russian wheat, and essential Russian minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel. Sanctions against Russia will soon boomerang in terms of higher oil and gas prices for Europeans and Americans, more inflation, worsening supply chains, and the dreaded “economic uncertainty” afflicting stock markets and consumer spending.“
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/01/everyone-loses-in-the-conflict-over-ukraine/
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“In light of the grotesquely one-sided Ukrainian war news on the MSM, it can be well and truly said that America circa February 2022 has become the land where history died.
From the sophomoric coverage of CNN and NBC, for instance, you would think that Ukraine’s borders have been universally agreed upon by one and all for eons; that the government in Kiev has done absolutely nothing to provoke Russian suspicion and anger; and that Uncle Sam, NATO and the European Union have flitted around the neighborhoods on Russia’s borders merely cheer-leading for democracy and selflessly passing out economic aid and cookies to the long-suffering Ukrainian peoples.
Well, no. Today’s hot war eruption in Ukraine would absolutely not be happening save for the violent coup of February 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian President; and which coup was funded, organized and choreographed by Washington-based neocons, busybodies and arms merchants who otherwise had no reason for even existing in the post-Soviet world.”
https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2022/02/27/the-land-where-history-died/
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“It is the working people of our countries, on both sides, who are suffering as a direct result of military conflict,” said the Confederation of Labor of Russia.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/26/russian-labor-confederation-demands-peace-ukraine
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“In the US — and through most of the West in general — only the most committed hawks view Ukraine as an area of vital interest. In the US, for example, it is difficult to find a political constituency that believes Ukraine is worth the blood of American troops and the costs of a real war in general. The Russians view Ukraine as a matter of absolutely vital interest, much like the US views Mexico — and much like the US viewed of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Ukraine is taken over by anti-Russian forces, this could be seen in Moscow as something very much worth a costly war.
When it comes to Ukraine, the Russian regime could be willing to endure very high costs that the West is not politically prepared to endure. Moscow might be willing to cut deeply into that “disposable surplus” that is necessary for war making. The history of Russia proves nothing over the past 210 years if not that Russian regimes are willing to expose the population to extreme deprivation in pursuit of protecting what they see as vital interests.”
https://mises.org/wire/russian-weakness-and-russian-threat-west
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“If you are frightened by the current crisis in Ukraine, you are having a rational response.
We are closer to war between the two largest nuclear-armed states than we have been since the early 1980s. The United States and Russia are not in direct combat, and President Biden has wisely ruled out sending U.S. forces to Ukraine. Nor would either state intentionally launch a “bolt-out-of-the-blue” nuclear attack.
But the United States and Russia are in conflict. While they are carefully choosing which instruments of coercion to apply, they both have developed doctrines of “integrated deterrence” over the past 10 years that integrate nuclear weapons into the coercive options they employ.”
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“If the White House actually thought it could publicly shame China into condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, perhaps this shows it is incapable of understanding the serious challenge it now faces from a Russia-China entente.”
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/02/28/putin-no-pariah-in-beijing/
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“Durham seems intent on exposing the larger conspiracy, including the Russia dossier and electronic spying by the Clinton campaign.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/more-questions-about-russiagate/
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“In that larger war, Russia and China have stressed the need to balance the US led unipolar world by creating a multipolar world in which other nations have a voice. In that multipolar world, the American hegemon would not have the power to supplant the Security Council and render decisions that are in its own self-interest and that pose a threat to peace and international law. That threat has been evidenced overtly in Kosovo, Libya, Iraq and Syria and covertly in the US coups in Ukraine and Latin America.
The new multipolar world would not be against the US but would balance the US. It would not be a world of multiple blocs but a world that transcends blocs.”
https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2022/02/28/trading-losses-in-ukraine/
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“When it comes to recent history, I know that this conflict is not as simple as “democracy v. autocracy.” This conflict, as with all things, has a history. Some hawks and supporters of American unipolar hegemony may not want to hear this, but yes, the United States is complicit in this crisis. In the waning days of the Cold War, Western leaders offered assurances that the U.S. would not expand NATO. Even the architect of the US government’s containment policy, George Kennan, called NATO expansion the “most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” The US broke those assurances, those warnings were ignored, and American presidents from both parties proceeded anyhow. Putin told us where his red lines were, and we ignored them.
I also recognize that the moral landscape of politics does not align neatly with the platitudes emanating from Washington. Again, this is not to excuse Putin’s actions. However, politics is a Machiavellian game, and this has not changed, despite all the banalities to the contrary. Most Americans and those in the Western world have been living in a fantasy world, one that says that humanity has escaped the horror of history and transcended the confines of the human condition. Recent history should have disabused of those illusions.”
https://original.antiwar.com/Brandan_Buck/2022/02/27/why-i-wont-fight/
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“With Russia’s attack on Ukraine underway, the corporate media is awash with openly hostile coverage of the conflict, embedded with an implicit premise that the Russian Aggressor has invented an empty pretext for the invasion of its neighbor. Concerns over NATO, it suggests, are merely cover for an expansionist dictator hellbent on conquering Europe.
Vladimir Putin’s ongoing incursion into Ukraine is excessive and unjustified. The deaths of innocent civilians are on his hands, and steps short of an assault were likely available to him. (A true peacekeeping mission to defend Russian-speaking minority separatists — who’ve invoked a legitimate desire to break away from a state that has declared war on them — was not attempted.)
Instead, an invasion and, possibly, an outright regime change operation to “de-Nazify” the Ukrainian government, are well in progress.
However, Moscow’s overreaction to the Donbass crisis does not negate its long-aired concerns over NATO’s growth east, as the bloc has gained more than a dozen new members since the dissolution of the USSR. Despite regular dismissal — and flat-out historical denial — by Western officials, much of the press and NATO itself, a neutral look at Russia’s concerns finds they are not unreasonable.”
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/media-criticism-of-putins-invasion-rings-hollow/
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“Ann Wright, a retired Army colonel and US diplomat who resigned in protest over the US invasion of Iraq, recounted that as many as 1,600 Russians have been arrested for protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just as Americans were arrested when they protested against the Iraq invasion in March, 2003. “The citizens of the United States and citizens of Russia don’t want war. However we keep having leaders that seem to think they can get away with war and they do!” observed Wright on Thursday, as she highlighted the role of anti-war demonstrators who “hit the streets with signs and banners with our concern so leaders and media see visible opposition to war.””
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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/antiwar-protesters-genius/
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“We must come together across borders to demand the withdrawal of Russian troops and immediate talks to find a diplomatic solution,” says Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/26/anti-war-coalition-holds-online-rally-peace-ukraine
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“Putin wants Ukraine to declare its neutrality, but the US is stepping up support for Ukraine and discouraging talks.”
Russia has made clear that one of its main justifications for its assault on Ukraine is the country’s alignment with NATO. Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Zelensky, told Reuters that Kyiv is ready to hold talks with Russia on Ukraine’s “neutral status.”
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“Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s “regime change” in early 2014 without weighing the likely chaos and consequences, wrote Robert Parry on July 13, 2015.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/26/robert-parry-the-mess-that-nuland-made/
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“For all the understandable and justifiable outrage over Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to abandon diplomacy and launch what appears to be an unprovoked act of aggression, a look at prior statements by Mr. Putin shows that, with the passage of time, patience and rationality gave way to irrationally, paranoia and ultimately the decision to launch an armed conflict.”
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“Now is the time to stand in solidarity with the incredibly brave Russian people who are bravely resisting this aggression by holding huge anti-war protests,” said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.”
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“Having for decades condemned western interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya as interventions that changed regimes, Russia is now indulging in the same practice in Ukraine.”
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/02/27/putin-now-doing-what-he-accused-america-regime-change
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“The popular movement for peace needs to be rekindled, to reassert itself. Peoples everywhere need to assert their right to participate in the creation of the new world order, based in peace, cooperation, and collaboration rather than competition, coercion, and bitter conflict.”
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“There will be reams of words attempting to provide a coherent analysis of the manufactured crisis dramatically unfolding in Ukraine, which took another unanticipated turn when Russia extended recognition to the Peoples’ Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the territory referred to as the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.
I will not add to that mountain of ink because, for me, the story is relatively simple. I have argued since 2015 that it was greed informed by miscalculations that drove the U.S. — with the support of European capital salivating from prospect of profits generated by gaining full control of the Ukrainian economy through the European Association agreement — to decide to overthrow the government of Viktor Yanukovych when he turned to Russia instead of surrendering Ukrainian sovereignty to U.S. and European capital.
This was the genesis of the crisis. For U.S. policymakers it did not matter that the coup government was made up of literal neo-Nazis and extremist white supremacists and antisemitic ultra-nationalists from the neo-Nazi Svoboda party — the National Socialist Party of Ukraine.
Nor was there any concern that one of the former commanders of the Azov Battalion, a violent right-wing gang that was merged into the Ukrainian National Guard and is now being trained by the British, said that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead in a final crusade … against the Semite-led Untermenschen” (sub-humans).”
https://www.blackagendareport.com/why-russian-federation-recognized-independence-movements-donbas
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“Bush’s willful act of aggression, his invasion, and eight-and-a-half-year military occupation of Iraq, has deeply hindered effective policy-making by the U.S. regarding Russia’s attack on Ukraine.”
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“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made Sen. Mitt Romney winner of the latest “strange new respect” award. When running for president in 2012 Romney insisted that Russia was “without question our number one geopolitical foe.” He’s being held up as a geopolitical prophet even though he was ostentatiously wrong then and remains wrong today.
At the time the Republican Party was desperate to retake foreign policy as its issue. It had owned national security during the Cold War — the Soviets offered classic enemies against which the GOP routinely ran. Then the blundering George W. Bush tossed away the issue with his endless war in Afghanistan, catastrophic bungle in Iraq, and ineffective responses to both North Korean and Iranian proliferation. To succeed him the GOP nominated Sen. John McCain, who had supported every war, real, proposed, and imagined, for years. Voters rightly ran screaming from their polling places.“
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“Some say the US has infinite resources to engage in a militarized challenge on both fronts, while the other camp wants a full pivot to Asia.”
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“The open doors some nations have offered the current wave of refugees has thrown into sharp relief the anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiment and policies the same governments only recently put forth toward other groups fleeing conflict from the Middle East and Africa.”
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“By ruling out a military response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden and his advisors demonstrated belated prudence. The revised stance also reflects the American public’s reluctance to get involved in a war between Russia and Ukraine. A February 11, 2022 YouGov poll found that only 13 percent of Americans surveyed favored sending troops, while 55 percent were opposed. Nevertheless, Washington’s irresponsible rhetoric had helped lead its Ukrainian client down the garden path to a needlessly risky confrontation with Russia.
The Ukraine episode was not the first time that Washington misled an informal security client in that part of the world about the extent of U.S. backing for its position and only to execute a policy retreat. George W. Bush’s administration treated Russia’s small neighbor, Georgia, as a valued “ally.” The president gushed over Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili’s alleged commitment to freedom and democracy. Washington provided financial and even some security aid to Georgia, and Bush lobbied strongly, but unsuccessfully, for Georgia’s inclusion in NATO.
Just as Ukraine’s government responded to Washington’s expressions of support by adopting an assertive stance toward Russia that Kyiv could not possibly have sustained on its own, Georgia overacted due to its perception of U.S. backing. Saakashvili’s forces shelled Russian peacekeeping troops in South Ossetia, a breakaway region that had resisted the central government’s control since the early 1990s. Russia responded with a full counteroffensive that brought its forces to the outskirts of Georgia’s capital. Retreating Georgian troops expressed amazement and a sense of betrayal that neither the United States nor NATO had entered the fray. Saakashvili pleaded with Bush to provide military support, but the White House made it clear that U.S. troops would not be leaving their barracks to fight Russia.
More cautious, hedging statements on the part of the U.S. president and his foreign policy team might have inhibited Saakashvili from taking rash actions. “
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-the-u-s-owes-its-security-clients/
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“There must be “an immediate halt to use of the internationally banned weapon,” said the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munition Coalition.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/25/russia-condemned-alleged-use-cluster-bombs-ukraine
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“Encouraging peace is a worthwhile goal. Micromanaging other peoples’ lives is not. The US and Europe should allow Bosnia to sort out its own problems, even if that results in a break-up.”
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“Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld had the legal authority to permit government agents to commit felonies, though we now know that they did.”
https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2022/02/25/military-torturers-at-guantanamo-bay/
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“Murray describes his day in court, where his defense counsel said his case represents the biggest single interference with freedom of speech in the modern history of Scotland.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/25/craig-murray-your-man-with-the-petition/
