The U.S. Role in Events in Ukraine

It's Greater than You Have Been Led to Believe

‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’ Bob Dylan

Assertions now being made that the Russian military incursion into Ukraine is illegitimate are motivated by ignorance of American history toward the Russians, ignorance of American history in Ukraine, and ignorance of the long history of the Americans invading, overthrowing, undermining, and subverting other nations using the flimsiest of pretexts. The American political leadership accepts this jingoistic, know-nothing, response because it supports its own. The problem for the Americans is that this epoch of imperial arrogance is coming unmoored.

The U.S. spent the post-WWII period hemming the Soviets, now the Russians, in militarily. The stated reason from 1946 through 1991 was to ‘contain communism.’ With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was brief discussion of a peace dividend, the reallocation of national resources away from the military to domestic uses. However, the weapons industry and military-dependent towns and cities rebelled, and so a new enemy was invented--- international terrorism. Soon enough, the historically convenient foe of the Russians was revived.

The plausibility of the terrorist threat lay in expected blowback for U.S. military operations in the Middle East to sustain U.S. control of oil and gas distribution. National sovereignty was treated as a fiction except where American interests were found. The fantasy sold was that peace would prevail if the Americans controlled the world. As if to illustrate the folly of this conceit, for the brief period that the U.S. had military dominance, it launched serial wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and launched a coup in Ukraine.

Recall, the stated rationale for the 2003 American war against, and decade-long occupation of, Iraq was wholly fraudulent. Should Iraq have had WMDs, they would have been supplied to it by George H.W. Bush during the Iran-Iraq war. But it didn’t. Later, the political leadership of Libya handed over its weapons and was nevertheless bombed back to the Stone Age by NATO. The political leaderships of other nations, including Russia, watched how the U.S. threw its weight around when it could. The lesson: compliance with U.S. demands is no guarantee of its future actions.

This damned if you do, damned if you don’t, aspect of U.S. foreign policy places target nations in the position of seeing no well-defined benefit to complying with U.S. demands. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. unambiguously pledged, or were in the room when the U.S. pledged, to keep the NATO military alliance away from Russia’s border. The U.S. serially broke this pledge by moving NATO membership and weapons to Russia’s border.

Knowing this history, the Russian political leadership responded to three decades of U.S. provocation in the only way that might be effective--- through the Russian military incursion into Ukraine. Unbeknownst to the American people, if not the political leadership, shortly before the Russian incursion Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky increased the U.S.-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, restated his intention that Ukraine join NATO, and asked to be supplied with nuclear weapons.

Zelensky could not have been more provocative toward the Russians. He stepped-over two Russian red-lines, NATO membership for Ukraine and nuclear weapons on Russia’s border. And increasing the U.S.-sponsored ethnic-cleansing campaign against the Russia-speaking population of eastern Ukraine created a humanitarian emergency that the Russian political leadership couldn’t ignore. Zelensky was either acting on behalf of the Biden administration or he overstepped his bounds so wildly that the American political leadership should have intervened.

Either way, the U.S. bears responsibility for Zelensky’s actions through the U.S. led coup in Ukraine in 2014 in which the American government chose the new government of Ukraine. Ukraine was turned into a U.S. vassal-state where American arms, military training, and threat of intervention, kept Ukraine under American sponsorship. Those who reject this claim need to explain the process by which the Americans chose the new government of Ukraine before the duly elected President of Ukraine was ousted?

Largely unbeknownst to the American people, a U.S.-sponsored civil war has been raging in Ukraine since the U.S.-led coup there in 2014. The U.S. armed and trained one side in the civil war, ethnic Ukrainians, to commit a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine. To date, 14,000 Ukrainians have died, with eighty-percent of the casualties occurring amongst the ethnic-Russian population. This disproportion in casualties supports the contention of ethnic cleansing.

Today, American politicians are simply lying when they claim that the Russian incursion was unprovoked. Current CIA Director William Burns wrote a memo in 2008 laying out the Russian case against the U.S. continuing to move NATO to Russia’s border. Reasons included the direct threat to Russia’s security that doing so represented, as well as the regional instability that would result from East – West tensions. This regional instability was realized when the U.S. armed and trained ethnic Ukrainians to carry out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic-Russians.

Further detracting from the ‘unprovoked’ claim are the events back in the U.S. that followed the American-led coup in Ukraine in 2014. With American neocons firmly ensconced in the Democratic Party, the expectation was that Hillary Clinton would follow-up on the intent of the Ukrainian coup with more fervor than Barack Obama had. While Obama was in office, the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was built. Construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was completed and awaiting certification during Joe Biden’s first year in office.

These pipelines reduce the ability of the U.S. political leadership to dictate terms of governance to developed Europe. Control of food and energy can be used to bend the political will of any modern state. A few days of mass hunger will topple any government. Coming out of WWII, the U.S. national security state was keenly aware that control of energy conveyed effective political control. This conceit explains most U.S. foreign policy in the post-war period reasonably well. How liberated are the peoples of Iraq or Libya following American-led wars there? Not very.

To understand current events in Ukraine from the American public’s perspective, ask: what was the political purpose of Russiagate? The U.S.-led coup in Ukraine happened in 2014. Former CIA Director for the Obama administration, John Brennan, led the CIA at the time. Brennan visited Ukraine shortly after the coup. Obama made Joe Biden the American Viceroy in Ukraine. The expectation was that Hillary Clinton would be elected to build on the coup by continuing to corner Russia militarily.

To understand the role likely expected of Clinton, it was Bill Clinton who first unilaterally abrogated the American pledge to keep NATO away from Russia’s border. Bill Clinton held out the prospect of former Soviet satellites joining NATO. By late in his second term, Clinton was trying to place NATO troops and weapons on Russia’s border. Perceived at the time as hemming Russia in militarily while it lacked the capacity to respond, the question was put off to another time: what happens when Russia can respond militarily?

With the U.S. and Russia both possessing nuclear weapons, the prospect of the U.S. launching a regime-change war against Russia was always poorly considered. Surrounding Russia with American (‘NATO’) nuclear weapons shortened the time it would take to launch a nuclear attack, thereby increasing the likelihood that the Russians would mistakenly respond in-kind to a perceived American attack. The possibility of nuclear disarmament that the end of the Soviet Union offered was wasted when Bill Clinton chose instead to threaten Russia militarily through NATO.

Donald Trump was elected promising to improve relations with Russia. Trump was out-of-the-loop regarding CIA / neocon plans for cornering Russia militarily. The CIA shifted tactics to demonizing Russia while trying to get rid of Trump as quickly as possible. Former CIA Director Brennan was a leading protagonist in the Russiagate saga. He repeatedly claimed possession of inside information regarding Trump and Russia that proved false. The CIA demonized Russia, Trump lost the 2020 election, and friend-of-empire Joe Biden was brought to power.

Joe Biden was elected in the U.S. just like Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in Ukraine. Question: how was the U.S. able to install a new government in Ukraine in 2014? The U.S. didn’t simply oust Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and let the Ukrainians decide who would lead them. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, was caught choosing the new government of Ukraine weeks before the elected president of Ukraine was ousted. So, how was the U.S. able to install the new government?

Following the U.S.-led coup, what was the political process for handing the power to choose their elected officials back to the Ukrainian people? From 2014 on, the U.S. was arming and training the Ukrainian military to carry out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine. The Donbass continued to be part of Ukraine during this time. How, precisely, were free and fair elections carried out in the midst of a campaign of ethnic cleansing?

While there is plenty not to like about Donald Trump, his actual policies were mainstream libertarian-Republican. And his vile and offensive comments on immigration and race could have been lifted from any of a number of speeches made by Bill Clinton or Joe Biden. Democrats have long been better than Republicans at removing politically inconvenient content from the internet. However, for most of Trump’s time in office, anyone who looked could have found these speeches by Clinton and Biden on YouTube.

Joe Biden was mentioned by Victoria Nuland as being part of the American-led coup in Ukraine in 2014. Shortly thereafter, Obama made Biden Viceroy in Ukraine. John Brennan was CIA Director in 2014, and he became a leading protagonist in the Russiagate fraud from 2016 forward. In 2021, Joe Biden was brought to power in the U.S., and Volodymyr Zelensky started provoking Russia far out of proportion to the Ukrainian military’s ability to back him up.

At a minimum, the same American players that participated in the coup in Ukraine, and were bit actors or leading protagonists in the Russiagate fraud, are now back at the center of current tensions with Russia. Victoria Nuland is back at the State Department and Joe Biden is in the White house. And the CIA’s interim campaign to demonize Russia has been wildly successful. The urban bourgeois in the U.S. believe CIA propaganda exactly as it was fed to them. Word for word.

Outside of CIA propaganda that was filtered through the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC, it is difficult to understand American hostility toward Russia. The only shred of Russiagate that remains, largely irrelevant videos made by a company owned by a businessperson close to Vladimir Putin, was abandoned when the company in question, Concord Management, challenged Robert Mueller’s legal team in an American court. Implied is that Mueller’s premise when he charged the Russians was that they would never challenge the charges in an American court. They did. He folded. Instantly.

Nevertheless, the storyline favorable to ExxonMobil, Northrup Grumman, and the (pre-Burns?) CIA, persists. Rather than taking the case made by the Russians to heart, the Americans--- including the CIA-allied press, are ‘explaining’ to the shrinking part of the world that is still listening what the Russians really mean. The Russian political leadership is acting through the only language that the American political leadership apparently understands, violence. The Americans are playing games and positioning for domestic political gain.

Joe Biden could end the violence in Ukraine today at no cost in terms of U.S. security by giving the Russians the security guarantees they say they need. The Clintonite premise that American security was enhanced by the expansion of NATO toward Russia requires a pre-nuclear weapons mind-set. Encircling a standing army means one thing when it ends a conflict, and another when it escalates into nuclear annihilation, either intentional or accidental. Placing NATO’s (U.S.) nuclear weapons on Russia’s border reduces U.S. security.

None other than Noam Chomsky recently weighed in with what has to be the most asinine ‘analysis’ yet offered. Chomsky offered that the Russians could have appealed to NATO members Germany and France to rein the Americans in. In fact, in 1990, and in coordination with the Americans, German political leaders promised the Russians that NATO wouldn’t be moved any closer to Russia. They then spent the next three decades watching the Americans serially break the pledge without publicly challenging them on it.

What has changed in the intervening years is that American politicians are no longer skilled in statecraft; donors in the weapons and oil and gas industries now dictate government policy; imperial follies like the U.S. war against Iraq have demonstrated American recklessness and fecklessness internationally; and the Americans have demonstrated that they won’t stop pushing Russia until they are made to do so. Kudos might be given to Joe Biden for not escalating in the present if he hadn’t spent the prior thirty years escalating.

As a reminder, it was only eighteen short months ago that a Leftish political program of environmental resolution, raising the minimum wage, controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, ending perpetual wars, and putting the un and under employed to work at a living wage in government jobs, was being proposed. Now, anything short of nuclear annihilation is appealing. This change didn’t just happen. Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema were courted by the Democrats. Joe Biden and the Democrats own the current moment. God help us all.