Since the imposition of the Gilded Age, U.S. leaders and their supporters have been fond of imposing imperial doctrine on the rest of the world. Time and again, military maneuvers, into other countries–especially Third World countries–have been a part of the U.S. psyche. Now, it’s really no different from the conflict involving Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The following is a sample of sources one wouldn’t usually find in the capitalist/corporate media because of their critiques of the U.S. and NATO:
(Note: This article does not imply that Russia is exempt from criticism. It is not totally innocent. It did annex the Crimea, but that is where the Black Sea Naval Fleet is located, and was part of Russia before the 1950s. If the U.S. and NATO were to occupy the Crimea, it would further fuel tensions in an already volatile conflict.)
John J. Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, wrote the following in an issue of Foreign Policy (September/October 2014): “According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.”
The roots of the trouble involve the attempted expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders, and the taking of Ukraine and turning it a so-called “Western democracy.” Since Russia’s strategic interests are being threatened, it is naturally concerned. Think of a scenario where Russia stationed troops in Canada and Mexico along the northern and southern borders of the U.S. and had weapons pointed at it. U.S. leaders and their supporters would be outraged and would not tolerate it. It’s a similar situation with Russia.
In the 1990s into the early 2000s, due to the intentions of the Clinton and the Bush Jr. administrations, NATO has expanded into Eastern Europe and is trying to expand more. Rather than continuing to exist, NATO should have been dissolved as the Warsaw Pact did. The Cold War was over, presenting a chance to negotiate for peace. But rather than honestly do that, U.S. officials provoked tensions by lying to Russia in a verbal agreement that there would be no expansion.
Writing for Global Research (01/31/2022), Nury Vittachi explained that during negotiations with the West and the Soviet Union (before its demise), Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stated that NATO expansion to the East was unacceptable. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (under Bush Sr.) promised Gorbachev that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” In Orwellian-like fashion, the opposite has occurred. Vitacchi wrote, “NATO promised not to expand eastwards. It has done so repeatedly. It is never called out for this.” Vittachi also wrote, “Like China, Russia will be painted as the aggressor whatever it does. The western powers will be portrayed as the defenders, whatever they do.”
In an interview published by TruthOut (02/04/2022), intellectual Noam Chomsky discussed the Ukraine/Russia situation. Showing the Russian view, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying, “The main issue is our clear position on the inadmissibility of further expansion of NATO to the East and the deployment of strike weapons that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation.” Chomsky made a suggestion tailored for the West, saying “There is a simple way with deployment of weapons: Don’t deploy them. There is no justification for doing so. The U.S. may claim that they are defensive, but Russia surely doesn’t see it that way, and with reason.” Chomsky brought up the idea of Ukraine being neutral, pointing out that the U.S. had rejected that, and Chomsky rejected the rejection, saying that the U.S.’s concern for the sanctity of Ukrainian sovereignty is “ridiculous posturing.”
Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was interviewed by the Analysis News and said that the current NATO alliance that includes the Eastern European and Baltic nations “is an untenable alliance. It will fall of its own weight. It’ll topple of its own weight.” Regarding U.S./NATO objectives in having military contractors profit off of weapons sales to Ukraine, Wilkerson said “This is the way we do business. We have no commonsense and we certainly have no international sense.” Wilkerson also said that traditional U.S. domination worldwide is on the wane, but the U.S. treats it “as if it was some vicious attempt [by other nations] to challenge our superiority economically and financially. In other words, we lost our superiority in the world, almost in every respect, a long time ago.”
In a statement put out by CodePink, there was a demand to end the “drumbeat of war with Russia over Ukraine!” There was also a vow “to resist the normalization of war and demand that not a single bullet or gun be sent to Ukraine! No troops or arms to Eastern Europe! Diplomacy not war!” In a tweet, CodePink asked the following: “Why does @POTUS have a ‘swift and severe’ response only when it comes to war & the military industrial complex? It adds: “#BuildBack Better is the compromise for people and the planet and it still hasn’t passed.”
Likewise, the Green Party put out a statement saying that “[c]orporate media in the US has been warning about a possible invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This, Russia denies. But this propaganda has been used by the Biden administration to whip up sentiment for war.” It also brought up U.S./NATO expansion, saying that “[f]or years the US and its allies have moved NATO into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet States in violation of agreements made with Russia.”
Sanctions against Russia are also being concocted. In the Common Dreams website, Julia Conley wrote (01/31/2022) about Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who boasted that it will include the “mother of all sanctions.” Harshly, Menendez adds that sanctions would be “crippling to their economy, meaningful in terms of consequences to the average Russian and their accounts and pensions.” Now that’s “real” democracy.
In a biting critique of U.S./NATO intentions, Margaret Kimberly, who is a columnist for the Black Agenda Report, wrote in Common Dreams (01/27/2022) that in 2014 U.S. leaders supported a coup that put a “far-right clique in power.” Kimberly revealed that the information on the Ukraine situation is not “conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in the corporate media.” Kimberly advised that the “American people should just say no” to war and U.S./NATO intentions. She added, “[t]he Biden administration is sorely mistaken if they think the public are in the mood for war with another nuclear power.” Kimberly also wrote about how Russia and China are no longer enemies but “are very close.” She quoted Chinese president Xi Jinping saying that they are “better than allies.” Kimberly further wrote, “Why shouldn’t they be? Both countries want to protect themselves from American aggression.” “If the U.S. is allowed to do what it wants then the whole world is at risk. This is not hyperbole. The U.S. has withdrawn from decades old nuclear weapons agreements and now pushes the world toward the precipice.”
Regarding Ukrainians’ reactions, some were gung-ho to be involved in a war with Russia. Others were not, and were skeptical about a Russian invasion. In a piece published in the People’s World (01/25/2022), John Wojcik wrote that MSNBC reporter Matt Bradley was “reporting from Kiev” and “described a city where everyone seemed to be going about their business as usual, shopping, going to school, and commuting to work. He even noted that members of the public thought an invasion from Russia would not happen and that the controversy was the fault of the U.S. and NATO.” But that “was the last one like that coming from Bradley. He has submitted no further reports regarding public reactions in Kiev.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was blunter about the situation in a press conference. Vitacci wrote that Zelensky “said his countries current problems came from the west rather than the east.” “Furthermore, the real threat to Ukraine was not Russia, but the ‘destabilisation of the situation inside the country.”’ Vitacchi further wrote that Zelensky stated the “cause of the panic was the press itself.” “The Ukrainian leader went on to slam the US, British and other Western diplomats who were fleeing the country, as if a much-described war was actually real.”
Being more direct than in his other piece, Wojcik also wrote in another issue of the People’s World (01/21/2022) how morally bankrupt the U.S./NATO policy is: “In the case of Ukraine, as is most often the case with such NATO militarism, the operation is disguised as one intended to ‘spread democracy.’ [T]he idea spread far and wide in the Western corporate media and from governments involved that Ukraine was not being separated from Russia by a fascist coup backed by the West but rather by an ‘Orange Revolution’ in which democracy was the aim.” Wojcik further wrote that “[T]he ‘democratic’ government turned control over the police and military to historically well-known fascist organizations. They remain in control of those fascist organizations today. “‘Promoting democracy’ is the excuse the U.S. always uses when it wants to topple a regime it does not support.”
Since the demise of the USSR, U.S. leaders and their supporters have tried take advantage of the current international situation, seeing that there is no rival power to directly compete with them. It’s more a case of spreading the rule of capital rather than spreading democracy. It’s something like the Gilded Age on steroids.