The U.S. has become the most profound source of instability worldwide, Richard Haass, who is stepping down as president of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, said Friday.
After running the organization for two decades, Haass said he has come to a disturbing conclusion that the most serious danger to the world’s security right now is the United States itself, he told The New York Times in an interview.
The unraveling of the American political system means that for the first time in his life, the internal threat has surpassed the external threat, he added.
Instead of being the most reliable anchor in a volatile world, the United States has become the most profound source of instability and an uncertain exemplar of democracy, Haass was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
“Our domestic political situation is not only one that others don’t want to emulate … But I also think that it’s introduced a degree of unpredictability and a lack of reliability that’s really poisonous. For America’s ability to function successfully in the world, I mean, it makes it very hard for our friends to depend on us,” he said.
After exploring other countries for most of the past half-century, Haass is ready to explore his own, as “the challenges at home have prompted a man who has spent his entire career as a policymaker and student of world affairs to turn his attention inward,” said the New York Times.
The question is whether the U.S. has changed in the long run. “I should have a nickel … for every non-American, every foreign leader who said to me: I don’t know what’s the norm and what’s the exception anymore,” said Haass.
Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Haass is a veteran of four administrations, one Democrat and three Republican, said the newspaper.
(Cover: A file photo of Richard Haass, U.S. foreign policy veteran. /CFP)
First, is a meaningful peace agreement possible? My answer is no. We are now in a war where both sides – Ukraine and the West on one side and Russia on the other – see each other as an existential threat that must be defeated. Given maximalist objectives all around, it is almost impossible to reach a workable peace treaty. Moreover, the two sides have irreconcilable differences regarding territory and Ukraine’s relationship with the West. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict that could easily turn back into a hot war. The worst possible outcome is a nuclear war, which is unlikely but cannot be ruled out.
Second, which side is likely to win the war? Russia will ultimately win the war, although it will not decisively defeat Ukraine. In other words, it is not going to conquer all of Ukraine, which is necessary to achieve three of Moscow’s goals: overthrowing the regime, demilitarizing the country, and severing Kyiv’s security ties with the West. But it will end up annexing a large swath of Ukrainian territory, while turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. In other words, Russia will win an ugly victory.
Before I directly address these issues, three preliminary points are in order. For starters, I am attempting to predict the future, which is not easy to do, given that we live in an uncertain world. Thus, I am not arguing that I have the truth; in fact, some of my claims may be proved wrong. Furthermore, I am not saying what I would like to see happen. I am not rooting for one side or the other. I am simply telling you what I think will happen as the war moves forward. Finally, I am not justifying Russian behavior or the actions of any of the states involved in the conflict. I am just explaining their actions.
Now, let me turn to substance.
Where We Are Today
To understand where the Ukraine war is headed, it is necessary to first assess the present situation. It is important to know how the three main actors – Russia, Ukraine, and the West – think about their threat environment and conceive their goals. When we talk about the West, however, we are talking mainly about the United States, since its European allies take their marching orders from Washington when it comes to Ukraine. It is also essential to understand the present situation on the battlefield. Let me start with Russia’s threat environment and its goals.
Russia’s Threat Environment
It has been clear since April 2008 that Russian leaders across the board view the West’s efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO and make it a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders as an existential threat. Indeed, President Putin and his lieutenants repeatedly made this point in the months before the Russian invasion, when it was becoming clear to them that Ukraine was almost a de facto member of NATO.
2 Since the war began on 24 February 2022, the West has added another layer to that existential threat by adopting a new set of goals that Russian leaders cannot help but view as extremely threatening. I will say more about Western goals below but suffice it to say here that the West is determined to defeat Russia and knock it out of the ranks of the great powers, if not cause regime change or even trigger Russia to break apart like the Soviet Union did in 1991.
In a major address Putin delivered this past February (2023), he stressed that the West is a mortal threat to Russia. “During the years that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union,” he said, “the West never stopped trying to set the post-Soviet states on fire and, most importantly, finish off Russia as the largest surviving portion of the historical reaches of our state. They encouraged international terrorists to assault us, provoked regional conflicts along the perimeter of our borders, ignored our interests and tried to contain and suppress our economy.” He further emphasized that, “The Western elite make no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, ‘Russia’s strategic defeat.’ What does this mean to us? This means they plan to finish us once and for all.” Putin went on to say: “this represents an existential threat to our country.”
3 Russian leaders also see the regime in Kyiv as a threat to Russia, not just because it is closely allied with the West, but also because they see it as the offspring of the fascist Ukrainian forces that fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in World War II.
Russia must win this war, given that it believes that it is facing a threat to its survival. But what does victory look like? The ideal outcome before the war began in February 2022 was to turn Ukraine into a neutral state and settle the civil war in the Donbass that pitted the Ukrainian government against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who wanted greater autonomy if not independence for their region. It appears that those goals were still realistic during the first month of the war and were in fact the basis of the negotiations in Istanbul between Kyiv and Moscow in March 2022.
5 If the Russians had achieved those goals back then, the present war would either have been prevented or ended quickly.
But a deal that satisfies Russia’s goals is no longer in the cards. Ukraine and NATO are joined at the hip for the foreseeable future, and neither is willing to accept Ukrainian neutrality. Furthermore, the regime in Kyiv is anathema to Russian leaders, who want it gone. They not only talk about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, but also “demilitarizing” it, two goals that would presumably call for conquering all of Ukraine, compelling its military forces to surrender, and installing a friendly regime in Kyiv.
A decisive victory of that sort is not likely to happen for a variety of reasons. The Russian army is not large enough for such a task, which would probably require at least two million men.
7 Indeed, the existing Russian army is having difficulty conquering all the Donbass. Moreover, the West would go to enormous lengths to prevent Russia from overrunning all of Ukraine. Finally, the Russians would end up occupying huge amounts of territory that is heavily populated with ethnic Ukrainians who loathe the Russians and would fiercely resist the occupation. Trying to conquer all of Ukraine and bend it to Moscow’s will, would surely end in disaster.
Rhetoric about de-Nazifying and demilitarizing Ukraine aside, Russia’s concrete goals involve conquering and annexing a large portion of Ukrainian territory, while simultaneously turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. As such, Ukraine’s ability to wage war against Russia would be greatly reduced and it would be unlikely to qualify for membership in either the EU or NATO. Moreover, a broken Ukraine, would be especially vulnerable to Russian interference in its domestic politics. In short, Ukraine would not be a Western bastion on Russia’s border.
What would that dysfunctional rump state look like? Moscow has officially annexed Crimea and four other Ukrainian oblasts – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe – which together represent about 23 percent of Ukraine’s total territory before the crisis broke out in February 2014. Russian leaders have emphasized that they have no intention of surrendering that territory, some of which Russia does not yet control. In fact, there is reason to think Russia will annex additional Ukrainian territory if it has the military capability to do so at a reasonable cost. It is difficult, however, to say how much additional Ukrainian territory Moscow will seek to annex, as Putin himself makes clear.
Russian thinking is likely to be influenced by three calculations. Moscow has a powerful incentive to conquer and permanently annex Ukrainian territory that is heavily populated with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. It will want to protect them from the Ukrainian government – which has become hostile to all things Russian – and make sure there is no civil war anywhere in Ukraine like the one that took place in the Donbass between February 2014 and February 2022. At the same time, Russia will want to avoid controlling territory largely populated by hostile ethnic Ukrainians, which places significant limits on further Russian expansion. Finally, turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state will require Moscow to take substantial amounts of Ukrainian territory so it is well-positioned to do significant damage to its economy. Controlling all of Ukraine’s coastline along the Black Sea, for example, would give Moscow significant economic leverage over Kyiv.
Those three calculations suggest that Russia is likely to attempt to annex the four oblasts – Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Odessa – that are immediately to the west of the four oblasts it has already annexed – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe. If that were to happen, Russia would control approximately 43 percent of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory.
9 Dmitri Trenin, a leading Russian strategist estimates that Russian leaders would seek to take even more Ukrainian territory – pushing westward in northern Ukraine to the Dnieper River and taking the part of Kyiv that sits on the east bank of that river. He writes that “A logical next step” after taking all of Ukraine from Kharkiv to Odessa “would be to expand Russian control to all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, including the part of Kyiv that lies on the that river’s eastern bank. If that were to happen, the Ukrainian state would shrink to include only the central and western regions of the country.”
It might seem hard to believe now, but before the Ukraine crisis broke out in February 2014, Western leaders did not view Russia as a security threat. NATO leaders, for example, were talking with Russia’s president about “a new stage of cooperation towards a true strategic partnership” at the alliance’s 2010 Summit in Lisbon.
11 Unsurprisingly, NATO expansion before 2014 was not justified in terms of containing a dangerous Russia. In fact, it was Russian weakness that allowed the West to shove the first two tranches of NATO expansion in 1999 and 2004 down Moscow’s throat and then allowed the George W. Bush administration to think in 2008 that Russia could be forced to accept Georgia and Ukraine joining the alliance. But that assumption proved wrong and when the Ukraine crisis broke out in 2014, the West suddenly began portraying Russia as a dangerous foe that had to be contained if not weakened.
Since the war started in February 2022, the West’s perception of Russia has steadily escalated to the point where Moscow now appears to be seen as an existential threat. The United States and its NATO allies are deeply involved in Ukraine’s war against Russia. Indeed, they are doing everything but pulling the triggers and pushing the buttons.
13Moreover, they have made clear their unequivocal commitment to winning the war and maintaining Ukraine’s sovereignty. Thus, losing the war would have hugely negative consequences for Washington and for NATO. America’s reputation for competence and reliability would be badly damaged, which would affect how its allies as well as its adversaries – especially China – deal with the United States. Furthermore, virtually every European country in NATO believes that the alliance is an irreplaceable security umbrella. Thus, the possibility that NATO might be badly damaged – maybe even wrecked – if Russia wins in Ukraine is cause for profound concern among its members.
In addition, Western leaders frequently portray the Ukraine war as an integral part of a larger global struggle between autocracy and democracy that is Manichean at its core. On top of that, the future of the sacrosanct rules-based international order is said to depend on prevailing against Russia. As King Charles said this past March (2023), “The security of Europe as well as our democratic values are under threat.”
14 Similarly, a resolution introduced in the U.S. Congress in April declares: “United States interests, European security, and the cause of international peace depend on … Ukrainian victory.”
15 A recent article in The Washington Post, captures how the West treats Russia as an existential threat: “Leaders of the more than 50 other countries backing Ukraine have couched their support as part of an apocalyptic battle for the future of democracy and the international rule of law against autocracy and aggression that the West cannot afford to lose.”
As should be clear, the West is staunchly committed to defeating Russia. President Biden has repeatedly said that the United States is in this war to win. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.” It must end in “strategic failure.” Washington, he emphasizes, will stay in the fight “for as long as it takes.”
17 Specifically, the aim is to defeat Russia’s army in Ukraine – erasing its territorial gains – and cripple its economy with lethal sanctions. If successful, Russia would be knocked out of the ranks of the great powers, weakening it to the point where it could not threaten to invade Ukraine again.
18 Western leaders have additional goals, which include regime change in Moscow, putting Putin on trial as a war criminal, and possibly breaking up Russia into smaller states.
At the same time, the West remains committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO, although there is disagreement within the alliance about when and how that will happen.
20 Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary general told a news conference in Kyiv in April (2023) that “NATO’s position remains unchanged and that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance.” At the same time, he emphasized that “The first step toward any membership of Ukraine to NATO is to ensure that Ukraine prevails, and that is why the U.S. and its partners have provided unprecedented support for Ukraine.”
21 Given these goals, it is clear why Russia views the West as an existential threat.
Ukraine’s Threat Environment and Goals
There is no doubt that Ukraine faces an existential threat, given that Russia is bent on dismembering it and making sure that the surviving rump state is not only economically weak, but is neither a de facto nor a de jure member of NATO. There is also no question that Kyiv shares the West’s goal of defeating and seriously weakening Russia, so that it can regain its lost territory and keep it under Ukrainian control forever. As President Zelensky recently told President Xi Jinping, “There can be no peace that is based on territorial compromises.”
22 Ukrainian leaders naturally remain steadfastly committed to joining the EU and NATO and making Ukraine an integral part of the West.
In sum, the three key actors in the Ukraine war all believe they face an existential threat, which means each of them thinks it must win the war or else suffer terrible consequences.
The Battlefield Today
Turning to events on the battlefield, the war has evolved into war of attrition where each side is principally concerned with bleeding the other side white, causing it to surrender. Of course, both sides are also concerned with capturing territory, but that goal is of secondary importance to wearing down the other side.
The Ukrainian military had the upper hand in the latter half of 2022, which allowed it to take back territory from Russia in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions. But Russia responded to those defeats by mobilizing 300,000 additional troops, reorganizing it army, shortening its front lines, and learning from its mistakes.
24 The locus of the fighting in 2023 has been in eastern Ukraine, mainly in the Donetsk and Zaporozhe regions. The Russians have had the upper hand this year, mainly because they have a substantial advantage in artillery, which is the most important weapon in attrition warfare.
Moscow’s advantage was evident in the battle for Bakhmut, which ended when the Russians captured that city in late May (2023). Although it took Russian forces ten months to take control of Bakhmut they inflicted huge casualties on Ukrainian forces with their artillery.
25 Shortly thereafter on 4 June, Ukraine launched its long-awaited counter-offensive at different locations in the Donetsk and Zaporozhe regions. The aim is to penetrate Russia’s front lines of defense, deliver a staggering blow to Russian forces, and take back a substantial amount of Ukrainian territory that is now under Russian control. In essence, the aim is to duplicate Ukraine’s successes in Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022.
Ukraine’s army has made little progress so far in achieving those goals and instead is bogged down in deadly attrition battles with Russian forces. In 2022, Ukraine was successful in the Kharkiv and Kherson campaigns because its army was fighting against outnumbered and overextended Russian forces. That is not the case today: Ukraine is attacking into the face of well-prepared lines of Russian defense. But even if Ukrainian forces break through those defensive lines, Russian troops will quickly stabilize the front and the attrition battles will continue.
26 The Ukrainians are at a disadvantage in these encounters because the Russians have a significant firepower advantage.
Where We Are Headed
Let me switch gears and move away from the present and talk about the future, starting with how events on the battlefield are likely to play out moving forward. As noted, I believe Russia will win the war, which means it will end up conquering and annexing substantial Ukrainian territory, leaving Ukraine as a dysfunctional rump state. If I am correct, this will be a grievous defeat for Ukraine and the West.
There is a silver lining in this outcome, however: a Russian victory markedly reduces the threat of nuclear war, as nuclear escalation is most likely to occur if Ukrainian forces are winning victories on the battlefield and threatening to take back all or most of the territories Kyiv has lost to Moscow. Russian leaders would surely think seriously about using nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. Of course, if I am wrong about where the war is headed and the Ukrainian military gains the upper hand and begins pushing Russian forces eastward, the likelihood of nuclear use would increase significantly, which is not to say it would be a certainty.
What is the basis of my claim that the Russians are likely to win the war?
The Ukraine war, as emphasized, is a war of attrition in which capturing and holding territory is of secondary importance. The aim in attrition warfare is to wear down the other side’s forces to the point where it either quits the fight or is so weakened that it can no longer defend contested territory.
27 Who wins an attrition war is largely a function of three factors: the balance of resolve between the two sides; the population balance between them; and the casualty-exchange ratio. The Russians have a decisive advantage in population size and a marked advantage in the casualty-exchange ratio; the two sides are evenly matched in terms of resolve.
Consider the balance of resolve. As noted, both Russia and Ukraine believe they are facing an existential threat, and naturally, both sides are fully committed to winning the war. Thus, it is hard to see any meaningful difference in their resolve. Regarding population size, Russia had approximately a 3.5:1 advantage before the war began in February 2022. Since then, the ratio has shifted noticeably in Russia’s favor. About eight million Ukrainians have fled the country, subtracting from Ukraine’s population. Roughly three million of those emigrants have gone to Russia, adding to its population. In addition, there are probably about four million other Ukrainian citizens living in the territories that Russia now controls, further shifting the population imbalance in Russia’s favor. Putting those numbers together gives Russia approximately a 5:1 advantage in population size.
Finally, there is the casualty-exchange ratio, which has been a controversial issue since the war started in February 2022. The conventional wisdom in Ukraine and the West is that the casualty levels on both sides are either roughly equal or that the Russians have suffered greater casualties than the Ukrainians. The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, goes so far as to argue that the Russian lost 7.5 soldiers for every one Ukrainian soldier in the battle for Bakhmut.
29 These claims are wrong. Ukrainian forces have surely suffered much greater casualties than their Russian opponents for one reason: Russia has much more artillery than Ukraine.
In attrition warfare, artillery is the most important weapon on the battlefield. In the U.S. Army, artillery is widely known as the “king of battle,” because it is principally responsible for killing and wounding the soldiers doing the fighting.
30 Thus, the balance of artillery matters enormously in a war of attrition. By almost every account, the Russians have somewhere between a 5:1 and a 10:1 advantage in artillery, which puts the Ukrainian army at a significant disadvantage on the battlefield.
31 Ceteris paribus, one would expect the casualty-exchange ratio to approximate the balance of artillery. Ergo, a casualty-exchange ratio on the order of 2:1 in Russia’s favor is a conservative estimate.
One possible challenge to my analysis is to argue that Russia is the aggressor in this war, and the offender invariably suffers much higher casualty levels than the defender, especially if the attacking forces are engaged in broad frontal assaults, which is often said to be the Russian military’s modus operandi.
33 After all, the offender is out in the open and on the move, while the defender is mainly fighting from fixed positions that provide substantial cover. This logic underpins the famous 3:1 rule of thumb, which says that an attacking force needs at least three times as many soldiers as the defender to win a battle.
34 But there are problems with this line of argument when it is applied to the Ukraine war.
First, it is not just the Russians who have initiated offensive campaigns over the course of the war.
35 Indeed, the Ukrainians launched two major offensives last year that led to widely heralded victories: the Kharkiv offensive in September 2022 and the Kherson offensive between August and November 2022. Although the Ukrainians made substantial territorial gains in both campaigns, Russian artillery inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking forces. The Ukrainians just began another major offensive on 4 June against Russian forces that are more numerous and far better prepared than those the Ukrainians fought against in Kharkiv and Kherson.
Second, the distinction between offenders and defenders in a major battle is usually not black and white. When one army attacks another army, the defender invariably launches counterattacks. In other words, the defender transitions to the offense and the offender transitions to the defense. Over the course of a protracted battle, each side is likely to end up doing much attacking and counterattacking as well as defending fixed positions. This back and forth explains why the casualty-exchange ratios in US Civil War battles and WWI battles are often roughly equal, not favorable to the army that started out on the defensive. In fact, the army that strikes the first blow occasionally suffers less casualties than the target army.
36 In short, defense usually involves a lot of offense.
It is clear from Ukrainian and Western news accounts that Ukrainian forces frequently launch counterattacks against Russian forces. Consider this account in The Washington Post of the fighting earlier this year in Bakhmut: “‘There is this fluid motion going on.’ said a Ukrainian first lieutenant … Russian attacks along the front allow their forces to advance a few hundred meters before being pushed back hours later. ‘It’s hard to distinguish exactly where the front line is because it moves like Jell-O,’ he said.”
37 Given Russia’s massive artillery advantage, it seems reasonable to assume that the casualty-exchange ratio in these Ukrainian counterattacks favors the Russians – probably in a lopsided way.
Third, the Russians are not employing – at least not often – large-scale frontal assaults that aim to rapidly move forward and capture territory, but which would expose the attacking forces to withering fire from Ukrainian defenders. As General Sergey Surovikin explained in October 2022, when he was commanding the Russian forces in Ukraine, “We have a different strategy… We spare each soldier and are persistently grinding down the advancing enemy.”
38 In effect, Russian troops have adopted clever tactics that reduce their casualty levels.
39 Their favored tactic is to launch probing attacks against fixed Ukrainian positions with small infantry units, which causes Ukrainian forces to attack them with mortars and artillery.
40 That response allows the Russians to determine where the Ukrainian defenders and their artillery are located. The Russians then use their great advantage in artillery to pound their adversaries. Afterwards, packets of Russian infantry move forward again; and when they meet serious Ukrainian resistance, they repeat the process. These tactics help explain why Russia is making slow progress in capturing Ukrainian held territory.
One might think the West can go a long way toward evening out the casualty-exchange ratio by supplying Ukraine with many more artillery tubes and shells, thus eliminating Russia’s significant advantage with this critically important weapon. That is not going to happen anytime soon, however, simply because neither the United States nor its allies have the industrial capacity necessary to mass produce artillery tubes and shells for Ukraine. Nor can they rapidly build that capacity.
41 The best the West can do – at least for the next year or so – is maintain the existing imbalance of artillery between Russia and Ukraine, but even that will be a difficult task.
Ukraine can do little to help remedy the problem, because its ability to manufacture weapons is limited. It is almost completely dependent on the West, not only for artillery, but for every type of major weapons system. Russia, on the other hand, had a formidable capability to manufacture weaponry going into the war, which has been ramped up since the fighting started. Putin recently said: “Our defense industry is gaining momentum every day. We have increased military production by 2.7 times during the last year. Our production of the most critical weapons has gone up ten times and keeps increasing. Plants are working in two or three shifts, and some are busy around the clock.”
42 In short, given the sad state of Ukraine’s industrial base, it is in no position to wage a war of attrition by itself. It can only do so with Western backing. But even then, it is doomed to lose.
There has been a recent development that further increases Russia’s firepower advantage over Ukraine. For the first year of the war, Russian airpower had little influence on what happened in the ground war, mainly because Ukraine’s air defenses were effective enough to keep Russian aircraft far away from most battlefields. But the Russians have seriously weakened Ukraine’s air defenses, which now allows the Russian air force to strike Ukrainian ground forces on or directly behind the front lines.
43 In addition, Russia has developed the capability to equip its huge arsenal of 500 kg iron bombs with guidance kits that make them especially lethal.
In sum, the casualty-exchange ratio will continue to favor the Russians for the foreseeable future, which matters enormously in a war of attrition. In addition, Russia is much better positioned to wage attrition warfare because its population is far larger than Ukraine’s. Kyiv’s only hope for winning the war is for Moscow’s resolve to collapse, but that is unlikely given that Russian leaders view the West as an existential danger.
Prospects for A Negotiated Peace Agreement
There is a growing chorus of voices around the world calling for all sides in the Ukrainian war to embrace diplomacy and negotiate a lasting peace agreement. This is not going to happen, however. There are too many formidable obstacles to ending the war anytime soon, much less fashioning a deal that produces a durable peace. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict, where both sides continue looking for opportunities to weaken the other side and where there is an ever-present danger of renewed fighting.
At the most general level, peace is not possible because each side views the other as a mortal threat that must be defeated on the battlefield. There is hardly any room for compromise with the other side in these circumstances. There are also two specific points of dispute between the warring parties that are unsolvable. One involves territory while the other concerns Ukrainian neutrality.
45 Almost all Ukrainians are deeply committed to getting back all their lost territory – including Crimea.
46 Who can blame them? But Russia has officially annexed Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe, and is firmly committed to keeping that territory. In fact, there is reason to think Moscow will annex more Ukrainian territory if it can.
The other Gordian knot concerns Ukraine’s relationship with the West. For understandable reasons, Ukraine wants a security guarantee once the war ends, which only the West can provide. That means either de facto or de jure membership in NATO, since no other countries can protect Ukraine. Virtually all Russian leaders, however, demand a neutral Ukraine, which means no military ties with the West and thus no security umbrella for Kyiv. There is no way to square this circle.
There are two other obstacles to peace: nationalism, which has now morphed into hypernationalism, and the complete lack of trust on the Russian side.
Nationalism has been a powerful force in Ukraine for well over a century, and antagonism toward Russia has long been one of its core elements. The outbreak of the present conflict on 22 February 2014 fueled that hostility, prompting the Ukrainian parliament to pass a bill the following day that restricted the use of Russian and other minority languages, a move that helped precipitate the civil war in the Donbass.
47 Russia’s annexation of Crimea shortly thereafter made a bad situation worse. Contrary to the conventional wisdom in the West, Putin understood that Ukraine was a separate nation from Russia and that the conflict between the ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers living in the Donbass and the Ukrainian government was all about “the national question.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which directly pits the two countries against each other in a protracted and bloody war has turned that nationalism into hypernationalism on both sides. Contempt and hatred of “the other” suffuses Russian and Ukrainian society, which creates powerful incentives to eliminate that threat – with violence if necessary. Examples abound. A prominent Kyiv weekly maintains that famous Russian authors like Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Boris Pasternak are “killers, looters, ignoramuses.”
49 Russian culture, says a prominent Ukrainian writer, represents “barbarism, murder, and destruction …. Such is the fate of the culture of the enemy.”
Predictably, the Ukrainian government is engaged in “de-Russification” or “decolonization,” which involves purging libraries of books by Russian authors, renaming streets that have names with links to Russia, pulling down statues of figures like Catherine the Great, banning Russian music produced after 1991, breaking ties between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, and minimizing use of the Russian language. Perhaps Ukraine’s attitude toward Russia is best summed up by Zelensky’s terse comment: “We will not forgive. We will not forget.”
Turning to the Russian side of the hill, Anatol Lieven reports that “every day on Russian TV you can see hate-filled ethnic insults directed at Ukrainians.”
52 Unsurprisingly, the Russians are working to Russify and erase Ukrainian culture in the areas that Moscow has annexed. These measures include issuing Russian passports, changing the curricula in schools, replacing the Ukrainian hryvnia with the Russian ruble, targeting libraries and museums, and renaming towns and cities.
53 Bakhmut, for example, is now Artemovsk and the Ukrainian language is no longer taught in schools in the Donetsk region.
54 Apparently, the Russians too will neither forgive nor forget.
The rise of hypernationalism is predictable in wartime, not only because governments rely heavily on nationalism to motivate their people to back their country to the hilt, but also because the death and destruction that come with war – especially protracted wars – pushes each side to dehumanize and hate the other. In the Ukraine case, the bitter conflict over national identity adds fuel to the fire.
Hypernationalism naturally makes it harder for each side to cooperate with the other and gives Russia reason to seize territory that is filled with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. Presumably, many of them would prefer living under Russian control, given the animosity of the Ukrainian government toward all things Russian. In the process of annexing these lands, the Russians are likely to expel large numbers of ethnic Ukrainians, mainly because of fear that they will rebel against Russian rule if they remain. These developments will further fuel hatred between Russians and Ukrainians, making compromise over territory practically impossible.
There is a final reason why a lasting peace agreement is not doable. Russian leaders do not trust either Ukraine or the West to negotiate in good faith, which is not to imply that Ukrainian and Western leaders trust their Russian counterparts. Lack of trust is evident on all sides, but it is especially acute on Moscow’s part because of a recent set of revelations.
The source of the problem is what happened in the negotiations over the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, which was a framework for shutting down the conflict in the Donbass. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel played the central role is designing that framework, although they consulted extensively with both Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Those four individuals were also the key players in the subsequent negotiations. There is little doubt that Putin was committed to making Minsk work. But Hollande, Merkel, and Poroshenko – as well as Zelensky – have all made it clear that they were not interested in implementing Minsk, but instead saw it as an opportunity to buy time for Ukraine to build up its military so that it could deal with the insurrection in the Donbass. As Merkel told Die Zeit, it was “an attempt to give Ukraine time … to become stronger.”
55 Similarly, Poroshenko said, “Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war — to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”
Shortly after Merkel’s Die Zeit interview in December 2022, Putin told a press conference: “I thought the other participants of this agreement were at least honest, but no, it turns out they were also lying to us and only wanted to pump Ukraine with weapons and get it prepared for a military conflict.” He went on to say that getting bamboozled by the West had caused him to pass up an opportunity to solve the Ukraine problem in more favorable circumstances for Russia: “Apparently, we got our bearings too late, to be honest. Maybe we should have started all this [the military operation] earlier, but we just hoped that we would be able to solve it within the framework of the Minsk agreements.” He then made it clear that the West’s duplicity would complicate future negotiations: “Trust is already almost at zero, but after such statements, how can we possibly negotiate? About what? Can we make any agreements with anybody and where are the guarantees?”
In sum, there is hardly any chance the Ukraine war will end with a meaningful peace settlement. The war is instead likely to drag on for at least another year and eventually turn into a frozen conflict that might turn back into a shooting war.
Consequences
The absence of a viable peace agreement will have a variety of terrible consequences. Relations between Russia and the West, for example, are likely to remain profoundly hostile and dangerous for the foreseeable future. Each side will continue demonizing the other while working hard to maximize the amount of pain and trouble it causes its rival. This situation will certainly prevail if the fighting continues; but even if the war turns into a frozen conflict, the level of hostility between the two sides is unlikely to change much.
Moscow will seek to exploit existing fissures between European countries, while also working to weaken the trans-Atlantic relationship as well as key European institutions like the EU and NATO. Given the damage the war has done to Europe’s economy and continues to do, given the growing disenchantment in Europe with the prospect of a never-ending war in Ukraine, and given the differences between Europe and the United States regarding trade with China, Russian leaders should find fertile ground for causing trouble in the West.
58 This meddling will naturally reinforce Russophobia in Europe and the United States, making a bad situation worse.
The West, for its part, will maintain sanctions on Moscow and keep economic intercourse between the two sides to a minimum, all for the purpose of harming Russia’s economy. Moreover, it will surely work with Ukraine to help generate insurgencies in the territories Russia took from Ukraine. At the same time, the United States and its allies will continue pursuing a hard-nosed containment policy toward Russia, which many believe will be enhanced by Finland and Sweden joining NATO and the deployment of significant NATO forces in eastern Europe.
59 Of course, the West will remain committed to bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, even if that is unlikely to happen. Finally, U.S. and European elites are sure to retain their enthusiasm for fostering regime change in Moscow and putting Putin on trial for Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Not only will relations between Russia and the West remain poisonous moving forward, but they will also be dangerous, as there will be the ever-present possibility of nuclear escalation or a great-power war between Russia and the United States.
Ukraine was in severe economic and demographic trouble before the war began last year.
61 The devastation inflicted on Ukraine since the Russian invasion is horrific. Surveying events during the war’s first year, the World Bank declares that the invasion “has dealt an unimaginable toll on the people of Ukraine and the country’s economy, with activity contracting by a staggering 29.2 percent in 2022.” Unsurprisingly, Kyiv needs massive injections of foreign aid just to keep the government running, not to mention fighting the war. Furthermore, the World Bank estimates that damages exceed $135 billion and that roughly $411 billion will be needed to rebuild Ukraine. Poverty, it reports, “increased from 5.5 percent in 2021 to 24.1 percent in 2022, pushing 7.1 million more people into poverty and retracting 15 years of progress.”
62 Cities have been destroyed, roughly 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and about 7 million are internally displaced. The United Nations has confirmed 8,490 civilian deaths, although it believes that the actual number is “considerably higher.”
63 And surely Ukraine has suffered well over 100,000 battlefield casualties.
Ukraine’s future looks bleak in the extreme. The war shows no signs of ending anytime soon, which means more destruction of infrastructure and housing, more destruction of towns and cities, more civilian and military deaths, and more damage to the economy. And not only is Ukraine likely to lose even more territory to Russia, but according to the European Commission, “the war has set Ukraine on a path of irreversible demographic decline.”
64 To make matters worse, the Russians will work overtime to keep rump Ukraine economically weak and politically unstable. The ongoing conflict is also likely to fuel corruption, which has long been an acute problem, and further strengthen extremist groups in Ukraine. It is hard to imagine Kyiv ever meeting the criteria necessary for joining either the EU or NATO.
US Policy toward China
The Ukraine war is hindering the U.S. effort to contain China, which is of paramount importance for American security since China is a peer competitor while Russia is not.
65 Indeed, balance-of-power logic says that the United States should be allied with Russia against China and pivoting full force to East Asia. Instead, the war in Ukraine has pushed Beijing and Moscow close together, while providing China with a powerful incentive to make sure that Russia is not defeated and the United States remains tied down in Europe, impeding its efforts to pivot to East Asia.
Conclusion
It should be apparent by now that the Ukraine war is an enormous disaster that is unlikely to end anytime soon and when it does, the result will not be a lasting peace. A few words are in order about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation.
The conventional wisdom about the war’s origins is that Putin launched an unprovoked attack on 24 February 2022, which was motivated by his grand plan to create a greater Russia. Ukraine, it is said, was the first country he intended to conquer and annex, but not the last. As I have said on numerous occasions, there is no evidence to support this line of argument, and indeed there is considerable evidence that directly contradicts it.
66 While there is no question Russia invaded Ukraine, the ultimate cause of the war was the West’s decision – and here we are talking mainly about the United States – to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. The key element in that strategy was bringing Ukraine into NATO, a move that not only Putin, but the entire Russian foreign policy establishment, saw as an existential threat that had to be eliminated.
It is often forgotten that numerous American and European policymakers and strategists opposed NATO expansion from the start because they understood that the Russians would see it as a threat, and that the policy would eventually lead to disaster. The list of opponents includes George Kennan, both President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Perry, and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, Paul Nitze, Robert Gates, Robert McNamara, Richard Pipes, and Jack Matlock, just to name a few.
67 At the NATO summit in Bucharest In April 2008, both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed President George W. Bush’s plan to bring Ukraine into the alliance. Merkel later said that her opposition was based on her belief that Putin would interpret it as a “declaration of war.”
Of course, the opponents of NATO expansion were correct, but they lost the fight and NATO marched eastward, which eventually provoked the Russians to launch a preventive war. Had the United States and its allies not moved to bring Ukraine into NATO in April 2008, or had they been willing to accommodate Moscow’s security concerns after the Ukraine crisis broke out in February 2014, there probably would be no war in Ukraine today and its borders would look like they did when it gained its independence in 1991. The West made a colossal blunder, which it and many others are not done paying for.
What the US Secretary of State Blinken says clearly shows how the present US rulers, like previous US administrations, view the tragedy of the Palestinian people at the hands of the rulers of Israel, a tragedy towards which the United States has made its major contribution as the protector and supporter of Israeli expansion and hegemony in the Middle East, North Africa to start with.
Washington is not concerned about what Israeli settlers and the Israeli army are doing in the occupied West Bank. Instead, their main focus remains to bring the Saudi rulers into the embrace of Israel by using all political and diplomatic leverage on them to normalise their relations with Israel. Washington is following this course to neutralize international solidarity with the national aspirations of Palestine’s colonized people.
Now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway, it is clear that the government and its Western allies are maintaining silence to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young people are paying.
As Ukraine prepared to launch its much heralded but long delayed counteroffensive, the media published a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier with his finger on his lips, symbolizing the need for secrecy to retain some element of surprise for this widely telegraphed operation.
Now that the offensive has been under way for two weeks, it is clear that the Ukrainian government and its Western allies are maintaining silence for quite a different reason: to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young people are paying to recover small scraps of territory from Russian occupation forces, in what some are already calling a suicide mission.
Western pundits at first described these first two weeks of fighting as “probing operations” to find weak spots in Russia’s defenses, which Russia has been fortifying since 2022 with multiple layers of minefields, “dragon’s teeth,” tank-traps, pre-positioned artillery, and attack helicopters, unopposed in the air, that can fire 12 anti-tank missiles apiece.
“This is a very difficult fight. It’s a very violent fight, and it will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost.”
On the advice of British military advisers in Kyiv, Ukraine flung Western tanks and armored vehicles manned by NATO-trained troops into these killing fields without air support or demining operations. The results have been predictably disastrous, and it is now clear that these are not just “probing” operations as the propaganda at first claimed, but the long-awaited main offensive.
A Western official with intelligence access told The Associated Press on June 14, “Intense fighting is now ongoing in nearly all sectors of the front… This is much more than probing. These are full-scale movements of armor and heavy equipment into the Russian security zone.”
Other glimpses are emerging of the reality behind the propaganda. At a press conference after a summit at NATO Headquarters, U.S. General Mark Milley warned that the offensive will be long, violent, and costly in Ukrainian lives.
“This is a very difficult fight. It’s a very violent fight, and it will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost,” Milley said.
Russian videos show dozens of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles lying smashed in minefields, and NATO military advisers in Ukraine have confirmed that it lost 38 tanks in one night on June 8, including newly delivered German-built Leopard IIs.
Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute explained to TheNew York Times that the Russians are trying to inflict as many casualties and destroy as many vehicles as possible in the areas in front of their main defensive lines, turning those areas into lethal kill zones. If this strategy works, any Ukrainian forces that reach the main Russian defense lines will be too weakened and depleted to break through and achieve their goal of severing Russia’s land bridge between Donbas and Crimea.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported that Ukraine’s forces suffered 7,500 casualties in the first 10 days of the offensive. If Ukraine’s real losses are a fraction of that, the long, violent bloodbath that General Milley anticipates will destroy the new armored brigades that NATO has armed and trained, and serve only to escalate the gory war of attrition that has destroyed Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, and Bakhmut, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians and Russians.
A senior European military officer in Ukraine provided more details of the carnage to Asia Times, calling Ukraine’s operations on June 8 and 9 a “suicide mission” that violated the basic rules of military tactics.
“They were trained by the British, and they’re playing Light Brigade.”
“We tried to tell them to stop these piecemeal tactics, define a main thrust with infantry support and do what they can,” he said. “They were trained by the British, and they’re playing Light Brigade,” he added, comparing the offensive to a suicidal charge into massive Russian cannon fire that wiped out Britain’s Light Cavalry Brigade in Crimea in 1854.
If Ukraine’s “Spring Offensive” plunges on to the bitter end, it could be more like the British and French Somme Offensive, fought near the French River Somme in 1916. After 19,240 British troops were killed on the first day (including Nicolas’s 20-year-old great-uncle, Robert Masterman), the battle raged on for more than four months of pointless, wanton slaughter, with over a million British, French, and German casualties. It was finally called off after advancing only six miles and failing to capture either of the two small French towns that were its initial objectives.
The current offensive was delayed for months as Ukraine and its allies grappled with the likelihood of the outcome we are now witnessing. The fact that it went ahead regardless reflects the moral bankruptcy of U.S. and NATO political leaders, who are sacrificing the flower of Ukraine’s youth in a proxy war they will not send their own children or grandchildren to fight.
As Ukraine launches its offensive, NATO is conducting Air Defender, the largest military exercise in its history, from June 12 to 23, with 250 warplanes, including nuclear-capable F-35s, flying from German bases to simulate combat operations in and over Germany, Lithuania, Romania, the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea. The exercise has led to at least 15 incidents between NATO and Russian aircraft in the skies near Lithuania.
It seems that nobody in NATO’s foreboding fortress in Brussels has stumbled on the concept of a “security dilemma,” in which supposedly defensive actions by one party are perceived as offensive threats by another and lead to a spiral of mutual escalation, as has been the case between NATO and Russia since the 1990s. Professor of Russian history Richard Sakwa has written, “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”
These risks will be evident in the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 11-12, where Ukraine and its eastern allies will be pushing for Ukraine membership, while the U.S. and western Europe insist that membership cannot be offered while the war rages on and will instead offer “upgraded” status and a shorter route to membership once the war ends.
The continued insistence that Ukraine will one day be a NATO member only means a prolongation of the conflict, as this is a red line that Russia insists cannot be crossed. That’s why negotiations that lead to a neutral Ukraine are key to ending the war.
But the United States will not agree to that as long as President Joe Biden keeps U.S. Ukraine policy firmly under the thumbs of hawkish neoconservative desk warriors like Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland at the State Department and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House. Pressure to keep escalating U.S. involvement in the war is also coming from Congress, where Republicans accuse Biden of “hemming and hawing” instead of “going all in” to help Ukraine.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, has called for diplomacy to bring peace to Ukraine, and U.S. intelligence sources have challenged dominant false narratives of the war in leaks to Newsweek and Seymour Hersh, telling Hersh that the neocons are ignoring genuine intelligence and inventing their own, just as they did to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Paradoxically, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are more realistic than their civilian colleagues about the lack of any military solution. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, has called for diplomacy to bring peace to Ukraine, and U.S. intelligence sources have challenged dominant false narratives of the war in leaks to Newsweek and Seymour Hersh, telling Hersh that the neocons are ignoring genuine intelligence and inventing their own, just as they did to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
With the retirement of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the State Department is losing the voice of a professional diplomat who was President Barack Obama’s chief negotiator for the JCPOA with Iran and urged Biden to rejoin the agreement, and who has taken steps to moderate U.S. brinkmanship toward China. While publicly silent on Ukraine, Sherman was a quiet voice for diplomacy in a war-mad administration.
Many fear that Sherman’s job will now go to Nuland, the leading architect of the ever-mounting catastrophe in Ukraine for the past decade, who already holds the #3 or #4 job at State as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.
Other departures from the senior ranks at State and the Pentagon are likely to cede more ground to the neocons. Colin Kahl, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who worked with Sherman on the JCPOA, opposed sending F-16s to Ukraine, and has maintained that China will not invade Taiwan in the near future. Kahl is leaving the Pentagon to return to his position as a professor at Stanford, just as China hawk General C.Q. Brown will replace General Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Milley retires in September.
Meanwhile, other world leaders continue to push for peace talks. A delegation of African heads of state led by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 17, to discuss the African peace plan for Ukraine.
President Putin showed the African leaders the 18-point Istanbul Agreement that a Ukrainian representative had signed back in March 2022, and told them that Ukraine had thrown it in the “dustbin of history,” after the now disgraced Boris Johnson told Zelenskyy the “collective West” would only support Ukraine to fight, not to negotiate with Russia.
The catastrophic results of the first two weeks of Ukraine’s offensive should focus the world’s attention on the urgent need for a ceasefire to halt the daily slaughter and dismemberment of hundreds of brave young Ukrainians, who are being forced to drive through minefields and kill zones in Western gifts that are proving to be no more than U.S.- and NATO-built death-traps.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. Other books include, “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” (2018); “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection” (2016); “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control” (2013); “Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart” (1989), and (with Jodie Evans) “Stop the Next War Now” (2005).
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist and a researcher with CODEPINK. He is the co-author, with Medea Benjamin, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
As Ukraine prepared to launch its much heralded but long delayed counteroffensive, the media published a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier with his finger on his lips, symbolizing the need for secrecy to retain some element of surprise for this widely telegraphed operation.
Now that the offensive has been under way for two weeks, it is clear that the Ukrainian government and its Western allies are maintaining silence for quite a different reason: to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young people are paying to recover small scraps of territory from Russian occupation forces, in what some are already calling a suicide mission.
Western pundits at first described these first two weeks of fighting as “probing operations” to find weak spots in Russia’s defenses, which Russia has been fortifying since 2022 with multiple layers of minefields, “dragon’s teeth,” tank-traps, pre-positioned artillery, and attack helicopters, unopposed in the air, that can fire 12 anti-tank missiles apiece.
“This is a very difficult fight. It’s a very violent fight, and it will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost.”
On the advice of British military advisers in Kyiv, Ukraine flung Western tanks and armored vehicles manned by NATO-trained troops into these killing fields without air support or demining operations. The results have been predictably disastrous, and it is now clear that these are not just “probing” operations as the propaganda at first claimed, but the long-awaited main offensive.
A Western official with intelligence access told The Associated Press on June 14, “Intense fighting is now ongoing in nearly all sectors of the front… This is much more than probing. These are full-scale movements of armor and heavy equipment into the Russian security zone.”
Other glimpses are emerging of the reality behind the propaganda. At a press conference after a summit at NATO Headquarters, U.S. General Mark Milley warned that the offensive will be long, violent, and costly in Ukrainian lives.
“This is a very difficult fight. It’s a very violent fight, and it will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost,” Milley said.
Russian videos show dozens of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles lying smashed in minefields, and NATO military advisers in Ukraine have confirmed that it lost 38 tanks in one night on June 8, including newly delivered German-built Leopard IIs.
Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute explained to TheNew York Times that the Russians are trying to inflict as many casualties and destroy as many vehicles as possible in the areas in front of their main defensive lines, turning those areas into lethal kill zones. If this strategy works, any Ukrainian forces that reach the main Russian defense lines will be too weakened and depleted to break through and achieve their goal of severing Russia’s land bridge between Donbas and Crimea.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported that Ukraine’s forces suffered 7,500 casualties in the first 10 days of the offensive. If Ukraine’s real losses are a fraction of that, the long, violent bloodbath that General Milley anticipates will destroy the new armored brigades that NATO has armed and trained, and serve only to escalate the gory war of attrition that has destroyed Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, and Bakhmut, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians and Russians.
A senior European military officer in Ukraine provided more details of the carnage to Asia Times, calling Ukraine’s operations on June 8 and 9 a “suicide mission” that violated the basic rules of military tactics.
“They were trained by the British, and they’re playing Light Brigade.”
“We tried to tell them to stop these piecemeal tactics, define a main thrust with infantry support and do what they can,” he said. “They were trained by the British, and they’re playing Light Brigade,” he added, comparing the offensive to a suicidal charge into massive Russian cannon fire that wiped out Britain’s Light Cavalry Brigade in Crimea in 1854.
If Ukraine’s “Spring Offensive” plunges on to the bitter end, it could be more like the British and French Somme Offensive, fought near the French River Somme in 1916. After 19,240 British troops were killed on the first day (including Nicolas’s 20-year-old great-uncle, Robert Masterman), the battle raged on for more than four months of pointless, wanton slaughter, with over a million British, French, and German casualties. It was finally called off after advancing only six miles and failing to capture either of the two small French towns that were its initial objectives.
The current offensive was delayed for months as Ukraine and its allies grappled with the likelihood of the outcome we are now witnessing. The fact that it went ahead regardless reflects the moral bankruptcy of U.S. and NATO political leaders, who are sacrificing the flower of Ukraine’s youth in a proxy war they will not send their own children or grandchildren to fight.
As Ukraine launches its offensive, NATO is conducting Air Defender, the largest military exercise in its history, from June 12 to 23, with 250 warplanes, including nuclear-capable F-35s, flying from German bases to simulate combat operations in and over Germany, Lithuania, Romania, the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea. The exercise has led to at least 15 incidents between NATO and Russian aircraft in the skies near Lithuania.
It seems that nobody in NATO’s foreboding fortress in Brussels has stumbled on the concept of a “security dilemma,” in which supposedly defensive actions by one party are perceived as offensive threats by another and lead to a spiral of mutual escalation, as has been the case between NATO and Russia since the 1990s. Professor of Russian history Richard Sakwa has written, “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”
These risks will be evident in the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 11-12, where Ukraine and its eastern allies will be pushing for Ukraine membership, while the U.S. and western Europe insist that membership cannot be offered while the war rages on and will instead offer “upgraded” status and a shorter route to membership once the war ends.
The continued insistence that Ukraine will one day be a NATO member only means a prolongation of the conflict, as this is a red line that Russia insists cannot be crossed. That’s why negotiations that lead to a neutral Ukraine are key to ending the war.
But the United States will not agree to that as long as President Joe Biden keeps U.S. Ukraine policy firmly under the thumbs of hawkish neoconservative desk warriors like Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland at the State Department and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House. Pressure to keep escalating U.S. involvement in the war is also coming from Congress, where Republicans accuse Biden of “hemming and hawing” instead of “going all in” to help Ukraine.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, has called for diplomacy to bring peace to Ukraine, and U.S. intelligence sources have challenged dominant false narratives of the war in leaks to Newsweek and Seymour Hersh, telling Hersh that the neocons are ignoring genuine intelligence and inventing their own, just as they did to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Paradoxically, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are more realistic than their civilian colleagues about the lack of any military solution. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, has called for diplomacy to bring peace to Ukraine, and U.S. intelligence sources have challenged dominant false narratives of the war in leaks to Newsweek and Seymour Hersh, telling Hersh that the neocons are ignoring genuine intelligence and inventing their own, just as they did to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
With the retirement of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the State Department is losing the voice of a professional diplomat who was President Barack Obama’s chief negotiator for the JCPOA with Iran and urged Biden to rejoin the agreement, and who has taken steps to moderate U.S. brinkmanship toward China. While publicly silent on Ukraine, Sherman was a quiet voice for diplomacy in a war-mad administration.
Many fear that Sherman’s job will now go to Nuland, the leading architect of the ever-mounting catastrophe in Ukraine for the past decade, who already holds the #3 or #4 job at State as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.
Other departures from the senior ranks at State and the Pentagon are likely to cede more ground to the neocons. Colin Kahl, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who worked with Sherman on the JCPOA, opposed sending F-16s to Ukraine, and has maintained that China will not invade Taiwan in the near future. Kahl is leaving the Pentagon to return to his position as a professor at Stanford, just as China hawk General C.Q. Brown will replace General Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Milley retires in September.
Meanwhile, other world leaders continue to push for peace talks. A delegation of African heads of state led by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 17, to discuss the African peace plan for Ukraine.
President Putin showed the African leaders the 18-point Istanbul Agreement that a Ukrainian representative had signed back in March 2022, and told them that Ukraine had thrown it in the “dustbin of history,” after the now disgraced Boris Johnson told Zelenskyy the “collective West” would only support Ukraine to fight, not to negotiate with Russia.
The catastrophic results of the first two weeks of Ukraine’s offensive should focus the world’s attention on the urgent need for a ceasefire to halt the daily slaughter and dismemberment of hundreds of brave young Ukrainians, who are being forced to drive through minefields and kill zones in Western gifts that are proving to be no more than U.S.- and NATO-built death-traps.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. Other books include, “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” (2018); “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection” (2016); “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control” (2013); “Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart” (1989), and (with Jodie Evans) “Stop the Next War Now” (2005).
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist and a researcher with CODEPINK. He is the co-author, with Medea Benjamin, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
“If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern!”
― Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
These are the words of a wise leader of the Indian freedom movement, who inspired millions of people worldwide with his message of non-violence and love for truth.
It is important for us to remember that Gandhi was not an atheist or an agnostic. He was a devout Hindu and a believer in God, like Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Sikh and Jewish believers. However, for him, an individual’s religion was a personal matter. No one should impose a religion or a belief on others. It was not for the state to tell people which religion to follow or which god to believe in (there are different views about god in many religions and his attributes, etc.). In the Middle Ages, the state and Church in European countries were united. But that changed. The secularisation process became the norm and new ways of looking at the roles of state and religion became widely accepted.
Secularism is rooted in the political idea that the state and religion have two different spheres and roles. They should remain separate and we should not allow anyone to mix them. People should follow whatever religions they want to follow without the interference of the state. As a result, there is no more religious coercion from the state or public bodies/institutions of the people. People have freedom of religion, freedom to practise any religion, freedom to convert to any other religion if any choose to do so, freedom to leave or reject religion and accept agnosticism, atheism, humanism or any other viewpoint. In democratic countries and their civil societies, these freedoms are essential ingredients of a civilised existence.
Unfortunately, such views have had much opposition in traditional, conservative societies. For example, in my country of origin, Pakistan (‘Land of the Pure’!), Muslim clerics and political manipulators have distorted the meaning of secularism. According to their version, which most Pakistanis accept, it means rejection of Islam and Allah! It is anti-Islam and a threat to Islam and Pakistan!
The escalation of attacks on Masafer Yatta in the West Bank comes after the Israeli Supreme Court named the area an Israeli army “firing zone” from which villagers can be expelled.
Woman sitting on the ruins of her house destroyed by Israeli authorities in Masafer Yatta in January. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Israeli forces continued their campaign of repression and colonization in the Palestinian village of Masafer Yatta over the weekend, leading to multiple injuries, including to a 6-year old child.
Settlers from the nearby settlement in Hebron, along with the Israeli army, harassed and physically assaulted activists and residents of Masafer Yatta, intensifying the attempts to expel the Palestinians from their homes, according to multiple reports from the ground.
The escalation comes in the aftermath of the Israeli Supreme Court’s ruling last year that the village falls under the “firing zone” of the Israeli army and that Palestinian residents can be expelled from the area.
Massafer Yatta in the Hebron Hills, West Bank. (UN OCHA, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Over 3,000 Palestinians live in Masafer Yatta, spread out over 14 smaller villages. Rights groups warn that following the court order the Israeli army can evict and forcibly relocate villagers at any moment.
On Sunday, illegal Israeli settlers, under the protection of Israeli soldiers, invaded the village and attacked Palestinians and their property, including agricultural land. Some of the settlers let their livestock free on Palestinian-owned agricultural land which led to extensive damage, while others set fire to the Palestinians’ crops. They also prevented Palestinian livestock from grazing on nearby pastoral areas.
Masafer Yatta, West Bank. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Following the Supreme Court order, the Israeli army has paved the way for settlers to build six new settlement outposts and herd their livestock in the area, in blatant violation of international law.
As threats of displacement and dispossession have intensified, so has the resistance to these efforts. Palestinians have been holding regular protests and demonstrations against the violence and attacks from settlers and the Israeli army. These protests have been met with more state repression.
Palestinians have also appealed to the international community and human rights groups to pressure Israel to end its illegal attempts to take over their land.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry reiterated this appeal over the weekend, calling on the international community, especially the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and Israel’s foremost ally, the United States, to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing war crimes and human rights violations in defiance of U.N. resolutions and international law.
The director-general of Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq noted that the recent intensification of Israeli settlement and annexation activities is due to waning international pressure and scrutiny on the Israeli government. According to reports, Israel plans to build and expand 10 illegal Israeli settlements and outposts in the area.
The US will focus its efforts on arming Ukraine and not attempting to bring the war to a negotiated settlement, America’s top diplomat said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out a plan to massively expand Kiev’s military before talks begin.
In a speech delivered in Finland on Friday, Blinken stated, “The United States – together with our allies and partners – is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine’s defense today, tomorrow, for as long as it takes.” He continued, “We believe the prerequisite for meaningful diplomacy and real peace is a stronger Ukraine, capable of deterring and defending against any future aggression.”
Blinken dismissed the idea of even a temporary pause in the fighting. “Some countries will call for a ceasefire. And on the surface, that sounds sensible – attractive, even. After all, who doesn’t want warring parties to lay down their arms? Who doesn’t want the killing to stop?” He said. “But a ceasefire that simply freezes current lines in place and enables Putin to consolidate control over the territory he’s seized…It would legitimize Russia’s land grab. It would reward the aggressor and punish the victim.”
The Secretary of State offered an ambitious vision of Kiev’s future military capabilities. “America and our allies are helping meet Ukraine’s needs on the current battlefield while developing a force that can deter and defend against aggression for years to come.” He added, “That means helping build a Ukrainian military of the future, with long-term funding, a strong air force centered on modern combat aircraft, an integrated air and missile defense network, advanced tanks and armored vehicles, national capacity to produce ammunition, and the training and support to keep forces and equipment combat-ready.”
It is unclear how long it would take to build the deterrence force envisioned by Blinken. American arms stockpiles are dwindling as Washington attempts to transfer Kiev enough military equipment to keep its army fighting. The US additionally has plans to significantly increase arms transfers to Taiwan.
Blinken claimed, “Our support for Ukraine hasn’t weakened our capabilities to meet potential threats from China or anywhere else – it’s strengthened them.” In November, the Wall Street Journal reported, “US government and congressional officials fear the conflict in Ukraine is exacerbating a nearly $19 billion backlog of weapons bound for Taiwan, further delaying efforts to arm the island.”
Additionally, the White House may not have the support it needs in the Capitol for such a massive military buildup in Ukraine. Blinken asserted that “in America, this support is bipartisan.” However, at the beginning of May, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said future support for Ukraine would be contingent on success in Kiev’s long-planned counteroffensive.
Since McCaul’s statement, Ukraine has slowly lost more territory to Russian forces, including Bakhmut. Zelensky committed endless resources to the city in a months-long battle despite the advice from his Western backers. The White House is now preparing for the counteroffensive to fail.
Washington’s strategy, as laid out by Blinken, calls for arming Ukraine and weakening Russia. “Russia is significantly worse off today than it was before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – militarily, economically, geopolitically,” he stated, adding, “President Putin has diminished Russian influence on every continent.”
However, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US European Command, told Congress in April that Moscow’s ground forces are “bigger today” than before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine last year.
While the White House has attempted to isolate the Kremlin, Moscow has weathered Western sanctions by developing relationships in the global south. On Friday, Russian officials met with prospective members of the BRICS coalition, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE. In September, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said in a meeting with Putin, “The relationship between countries that are sanctioned by the US, such as Iran, Russia or other countries, can overcome many problems and issues and make them stronger.”
Blinken justified the Biden administration’s commitment to a militaristic approach by claiming the White House attempted to engage the Kremlin in meaningful diplomacy before the invasion of Ukraine. “President Biden told President Putin that we were prepared to discuss our mutual security concerns – a message that I reaffirmed repeatedly – including in person, with Foreign Minister Lavrov.” The Secretary of State continued, “We offered written proposals to reduce tensions. Together with our allies and partners, we used every forum to try to prevent war, from the NATO-Russia Council to the OSCE, from the UN to our direct channels.”
In April 2022, Biden administration official Derek Chollet admitted that the White House refused to negotiate with the Kremin on Putin’s core concern, Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. “We made clear to the Russians that we were willing to talk to them on issues that we thought were genuine concerns,” Chollet said, adding that the administration didn’t think that “the future of Ukraine” was one of those issues and that its potential NATO membership was a “non-issue.”
To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex, the most powerful lobby in Washington.
By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Information Clearing House
In the year 2000, the U.S. government debt was $3.5 trillion, equal to 35% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2022, the debt was $24 trillion, equal to 95% of GDP. The U.S. debt is soaring, hence America’s current debt crisis. Yet both Republicans and Democrats are missing the solution: stopping America’s wars of choice and slashing military outlays.
Suppose the government’s debt had remained at a modest 35% of GDP, as in 2000. Today’s debt would be $9 billion, as opposed to $24 trillion. Why did the U.S. government incur the excess $15 trillion in debt?
The single biggest answer is the U.S. government’s addiction to war and military spending. According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, the cost of U.S. wars from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2022 amounted to a whopping $8 trillion, more than half of the extra $15 trillion in debt. The other $7 trillion arose roughly equally from budget deficits caused by the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Facing down the military-industrial lobby is the vital first step to putting America’s fiscal house in order
To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), the most powerful lobby in Washington. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned on January 17, 1961, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Since 2000, the MIC led the U.S. into disastrous wars of choice in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine.
The Military-Industrial Complex long ago adopted a winning political strategy by ensuring that the military budget reaches into every Congressional district. The Congressional Research Service recently reminded Congress that, “Defense spending touches every Member of Congress’s district through pay and benefits for military servicemembers and retirees, economic and environmental impact of installations, and procurement of weapons systems and parts from local industry, among other activities.” Only a brave member of Congress would vote against the military-industry lobby, yet bravery is certainly no hallmark of Congress.
America’s annual military spending is now around $900 billion, roughly 40% of the world’s total, and greater than the next 10 countries combined. U.S. military spending in 2022 was triple that of China. According to Congressional Budget Office, the military outlays for 2024-2033 will be a staggering $10.3 trillion on current baseline. A quarter or more of that could be avoided by ending America’s wars of choice, closing down many of America’s 800 or so military bases around the world, and negotiating new arms control agreements with China and Russia.
Yet instead of peace through diplomacy, and fiscal responsibility, the MIC regularly scares the American people with a comic-book style depictions of villains whom the U.S. must stop at all costs. The post-2000 list has included Afghanistan’s Taliban, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and recently, China’s Xi Jinping. War, we are repeatedly told, is necessary for America’s survival.
A peace-oriented foreign policy would be opposed strenuously by the military-industrial lobby but not by the public. Significant public pluralities already want less, not more, U.S. involvement in other countries’ affairs, and less, not more, US troop deployments overseas. Regarding Ukraine, Americans overwhelmingly want a “minor role” (52%) rather than a “major role” (26%) in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This is why neither Biden nor any recent president has dared to ask Congress for any tax increase to pay for America’s wars. The public’s response would be a resounding “No!”
While America’s wars of choice have been awful for America, they have been far greater disasters for countries that America purports to be saving. As Henry Kissinger famously quipped, “To be an enemy of the United States can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” Afghanistan was America’s cause from 2001 to 2021, until the U.S. left it broken, bankrupt, and hungry. Ukraine is now in America’s embrace, with the same likely results: ongoing war, death, and destruction.
The military budget could be cut prudently and deeply if the U.S. replaced its wars of choice and arms races with real diplomacy and arms agreements. If presidents and members of congress had only heeded the warnings of top American diplomats such as William Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia in 2008, and now CIA Director, the U.S. would have protected Ukraine’s security through diplomacy, agreeing with Russia that the U.S. would not expand NATO into Ukraine if Russia also kept its military out of Ukraine. Yet relentless NATO expansion is a favorite cause of the MIC; new NATO members are major customers of U.S. armaments.
The U.S. has also unilaterally abandoned key arms control agreements. In 2002, the U.S. unilaterally walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. And rather than promote nuclear disarmament—as the U.S. and other nuclear powers are required to do under Article VI the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—the Military-Industrial Complex has sold Congress on plans to spend more than $600 billion by 2030 to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Now the MIC is talking up the prospect of war with China over Taiwan. The drumbeats of war with China are stoking the military budget, yet war with China is easily avoidable if the U.S. adheres to the One-China policy that properly underpins U.S.-China relations. Such a war should be unthinkable. More than bankrupting the U.S., it could end the world.
Military spending is not the only budget challenge. Aging and rising healthcare costs add to the fiscal woes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, debt will reach 185 percent of GDP by 2052 if current policies remain unchanged. Healthcare costs should be capped while taxes on the rich should be raised. Yet facing down the military-industrial lobby is the vital first step to putting America’s fiscal house in order, needed to save the U.S., and possibly the world, from America’s perverse lobby-driven politics.
Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
The Russia-Ukraine War has been an unmitigated disaster. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded. Millions have been displaced. Environmental and economic destruction have been incalculable. Future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war.
We deplore the violence, war crimes, indiscriminate missile strikes, terrorism, and other atrocities that are part of this war. The solution to this shocking violence is not more weapons or more war, with their guarantee of further death and destruction.
As Americans and national security experts, we urge President Biden and Congress to use their full power to end the Russia-Ukraine War speedily through diplomacy, especially given the grave dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control.
Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy made an observation that is crucial for our survival today. “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
The immediate cause of this disastrous war in Ukraine is Russia’s invasion. Yet the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears. And Russian leaders made this point for 30 years. A failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the Russia-Ukraine War before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity.
The Potential for Peace
Russia’s current geopolitical anxiety is informed by memories of invasion from Charles XII, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. U.S. troops were among an Allied invasion force that intervened unsuccessfully against the winning side in Russia’s post-World War I civil war. Russia sees NATO enlargement and presence on its borders as a direct threat; the U.S. and NATO see only prudent preparedness. In diplomacy, one must attempt to see with strategic empathy, seeking to understand one’s adversaries. This is not weakness: it is wisdom.
We reject the idea that diplomats, seeking peace, must choose sides, in this case either Russia or Ukraine. In favoring diplomacy we choose the side of sanity. Of humanity. Of peace.
We consider President Biden’s promise to back Ukraine “as long as it takes” to be a license to pursue ill-defined and ultimately unachievable goals. It could prove as catastrophic as President Putin’s decision last year to launch his criminal invasion and occupation. We cannot and will not endorse the strategy of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.
We advocate for a meaningful and genuine commitment to diplomacy, specifically an immediate ceasefire and negotiations without any disqualifying or prohibitive preconditions. Deliberate provocations delivered the Russia-Ukraine War. In the same manner, deliberate diplomacy can end it.
U.S. Actions and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
As the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, U.S. and Western European leaders assured Soviet and then Russian leaders that NATO would not expand toward Russia’s borders. “There would be no extension of…NATO one inch to the east,” U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990. Similar assurances from other U.S. leaders as well as from British, German and French leaders throughout the 1990s confirm this.
Since 2007, Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO’s armed forces on Russian borders were intolerable – just as Russian forces in Mexico or Canada would be intolerable to the U.S. now, or as Soviet missiles in Cuba were in 1962. Russia further singled out NATO expansion into Ukraine as especially provocative.
Seeing the War Through Russia’s Eyes
Our attempt at understanding the Russian perspective on their war does not endorse the invasion and occupation, nor does it imply the Russians had no other option but this war.
Yet, just as Russia had other options, so too did the U.S. and NATO leading up to this moment.
The Russians made their red lines clear. In Georgia and Syria, they proved they would use force to defend those lines. In 2014, their immediate seizure of Crimea and their support of Donbas separatists demonstrated they were serious in their commitment to defending their interests. Why this was not understood by U.S. and NATO leadership is unclear; incompetence, arrogance, cynicism, or a treacherous mixture of all three are likely contributing factors.
Again, even as the Cold War ended, U.S. diplomats, generals and politicians were warning of the dangers of expanding NATO to Russia’s borders and of maliciously interfering in Russia’s sphere of influence. Former Cabinet officials Robert Gates and William Perry issued these warnings, as did venerated diplomats George Kennan, Jack Matlock and Henry Kissinger. In 1997, fifty senior U.S. foreign policy experts wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton advising him not to expand NATO, calling it “a policy error of historic proportions.” President Clinton chose to ignore these warnings.
Most important to our understanding of the hubris and Machiavellian calculation in U.S. decision-making surrounding the Russia-Ukraine War is the dismissal of the warnings issued by Williams Burns, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In a cable to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008, while serving as Ambassador to Russia, Burns wrote of NATO expansion and Ukrainian membership:
“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings? Profit from weapons sales was a major factor. Facing opposition to NATO expansion, a group of neoconservatives and top executives of U.S. weapons manufacturers formed the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Between 1996 and 1998, the largest arms manufacturers spent $51 million ($94 million today) on lobbying and millions more on campaign contributions. With this largesse, NATO expansion quickly became a done deal, after which U.S. weapons manufacturers sold billions of dollars of weapons to the new NATO members.
So far, the U.S. has sent $30 billion worth of military gear and weapons to Ukraine, with total aid to Ukraine exceeding $100 billion. War, it’s been said, is a racket, one that is highly profitable for a select few.
NATO expansion, in sum, is a key feature of a militarized U.S. foreign policy characterized by unilateralism featuring regime change and preemptive wars. Failed wars, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, have produced slaughter and further confrontation, a harsh reality of America’s own making. The Russia-Ukraine War has opened a new arena of confrontation and slaughter. This reality is not entirely of our own making, yet it may well be our undoing, unless we dedicate ourselves to forging a diplomatic settlement that stops the killing and defuses tensions.
Let’s make America a force for peace in the world.
Dennis Fritz, Director, Eisenhower Media Network; Command Chief Master Sergeant, US Air Force (retired) Matthew Hoh, Associate Director, Eisenhower Media Network; Former Marine Corps officer, and State and Defense official. William J. Astore, Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force (retired) Karen Kwiatkowski, Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force (retired) Dennis Laich, Major General, US Army (retired) Jack Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., 1987-91; author of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended Todd E. Pierce, Major, Judge Advocate, U.S. Army (retired) Coleen Rowley, Special Agent, FBI (retired) Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University Christian Sorensen, Former Arabic linguist, US Air Force Chuck Spinney, Retired Engineer/Analyst, Office of Secretary of Defense Winslow Wheeler, National security adviser to four Republican and Democratic US Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colonel, US Army (retired) Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army (retired) and former US diplomat
TIMELINE
1990 – U.S. assures Russia that NATO will not expand towards its border “…there would be no extension of…NATO one inch to the east,” says US Secretary of State James Baker.
1996 – U.S. weapons manufacturers form the Committee to Expand NATO, spending over $51 million lobbying Congress.
1997 – 50 foreign policy experts including former senators, retired military officers and diplomats sign an open letter stating NATO expansion to be “a policy error of historic proportions.”
1999 – NATO admits Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to NATO. U.S. and NATO bomb Russia’s ally, Serbia.
2001 – U.S. unilaterally withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
2004 – Seven more Eastern European nations join NATO. NATO troops are now directly on Russia’s border.
2004 – Russia’s parliament passed a resolution denouncing NATO’s expansion. Putin responded by saying that Russia would “build our defense and security policy correspondingly.”
2008 – NATO leaders announced plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia, also on Russia’s borders, into NATO.
2009 – U.S. announced plans to put missile systems into Poland and Romania.
2014 – Legally elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled violence to Moscow. Russia views ouster as a coup by U.S. and NATO nations.
2020 – U.S. unilaterally withdraws from Open Skies Treaty.
2021 – Russia submits negotiation proposals while sending more forces to the border with Ukraine. U.S. and NATO officials reject the Russian proposals immediately.
Feb 24, 2022 – Russia invades Ukraine, starting the Russia-Ukraine War.
This ad reflects the views of the signers. Paid for by Eisenhower Media Network, a project of People Power Initiatives.
Officials tell Axios that the idea was proposed by Milley and Austin during recent visits to Israel
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, May 17, 2023
The US has proposed to Israel to conduct joint military planning on potential attacks on Iran, Axios reported Wednesday.
The report cited US and Israeli officials who said the idea was proposed a few weeks ago during recent visits to Israel by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Israel is known for conducting covert attacks inside Iran and has stepped up its threats to launch an overt military attack against the Islamic Republic in recent years, although it’s not clear if Israel could pull off such an operation without US support.
The US and Israel have been stepping up military cooperation and held their largest-ever joint military exercises in January. US officials told Axios that the proposal for joint planning against Iran is unprecedented and could significantly boost US-Israel military ties even more.
The report said Israeli officials have taken the proposal with suspicion, worrying that it could “tie Israel’s hands.” A US official said that the idea is “not about planning any kind of joint US-Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program.”
But a US official also told Axios that the proposal was meant as a reassurance that the US backs Israel and is not meant to tie their hands. An Israeli official said that Israel is looking for the US to clarify exactly what joint planning means.
US-Iran tensions have been soaring since indirect negotiations to revive the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, fell apart toward the end of 2022. The US announced last week that it was increasing its military presence in the Persian Gulf after Iran seized two tankers, which came after the US seized a tanker carrying Iranian oil and stole the cargo.
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Author: Dave DeCamp
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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
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