The War In Ukraine Number 2

It is very important for American progressives to figure out who’s right or wrong in the war between Ukraine and Russia. The role of the US is going to be critical in determining whether Ukraine will be able to hold out against superior Russian forces. The question we have to ask is what is the war about? What are the goals of the two sides?

Putin presents a narrative in which Russia is portrayed as a victim. Its “intervention” in Ukraine, according to this story, was aimed at preventing Ukraine from joining NATO and adding another hostile power to the West’s military encirclement of Russia. The war then, is not between Russians and Ukrainians, but between Russia and an aggressive, hegemonic USA set on depriving a post-communist Russia of an opportunity to become a great power. Many American progressives, having spent a good part of their lives battling against various US military adventures, find this narrative quite plausible. However, those who buy it tend to share something in common: they don’t listen to what the Ukrainians are saying. It’s understandable why you wouldn’t talk to any opponents of the war living in Russia. They are not available. Any criticism of Putin’s war, indeed, even calling it a “war” rather than a “special military operation,” can result in a 14-year prison sentence. But it is more difficult to understand why outsiders wouldn’t listen to those who have borne the brunt of this war.

The facts refute the idea that a desire by the Ukraine to join NATO was the trigger that led to the Russian invasion. The issue of NATO was not raised by the Ukrainians until after the Russians–along with their proxy Wagner–had seized the Crimea and invaded the Donbas. The Putin narrative has the time-lines reversed. However, even if Zelenskyy had sought NATO membership before the Russian invasion, Ukraine never had a realistic chance of joining the Alliance. As Zelenskyy explained on the Fareed Zakaria show on CNN, in order for a country to be able to join NATO, every member nation must give its consent. It requires unanimous approval. Hungary, run by a right-wing authoritarian (Victor Orban), announced it would veto Ukraine’s application for membership. So much for that. But there is even a more fundamental reason why Ukraine would have been rejected. After Zelenskyy was elected president in 2019 (by 75% of the electorate–winning the “Russian” East as well as the rest of the Ukraine), he attempted to negotiate a settlement with the separatist in the Donbas. This is when the issue of NATO entered into the story. When the separatists rejected Zelenskyy’s peace overtures, he went to Brussels to talk with the leadership of NATO about becoming a member. He was told that NATO could not accept Ukraine so long as it was embroiled in a civil war. NATO, he was told, is a defensive organization. It protects its members from invasion from outside. It cannot take sides in local civil wars. Simply put, Ukraine is not eligible for membership in NATO. At that point, Zelenskyy realized that NATO was not an option for Ukraine.

in December 2019, soon after his trip to Brussels, Zelenskyy met with Putin to discuss the conflict in the Donbas and the occupation of the Crimea. He told Putin that Ukraine would agree to never join NATO: to become politically neutral, and: to postpone negotiations on the Crimea for ten years. However, he also told Putin that Ukraine would not cede the Donbas (the main center of Ukraine’s heavy industry). Putin, according to Zelenskyy, paid no attention to the NATO issue. He was focused entirely on Russia’s territorial claims– on which he refused to budge. That convinced Zelenskyy the war was all about territorial expansion.
I think it’s important to note that in the last two meetings between Trump and Putin, Trump emerged from both meetings saying “it’s all about territory.” And it is. But the issue of NATO should not be entirely ignored.

Bad Blood

Putin argues that this war in the Ukraine is not actually between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia, the USA and its Western Allies. While Ukrainians are the ones who are fighting and dying, whose cities are being destroyed, there is, nevertheless, a grain of truth in the Russian narrative. It would seem that when the USSR collapsed, the USA had a hard time letting go of its old Cold War attitudes. It made two serious mistakes in its dealing with the new Russia. One of these involved NATO. After the USSR’s demise, the USA recruited a number of old Warsaw Pact countries into NATO. That was a bad idea. GHW Bush had assured Gorbachev that if the USSR allowed the breaking up of the Soviet led Warsaw Pact, NATO would not move eastward. But it did. This move broke trust and created insecurity on the part of a Russia that was struggling to get on its feet and feeling weak. The NATO expansion was experienced as a humiliation of what had been a great power. Putin was a protégé of Yeltsin during this period, and like Yeltsin, he was opposed to NATO’s expansion. However, Russia was helpless to do anything about it. Putin concluded that Russia needed to become “great again” or it would be sidelined as a second-rate power—unable to defend its interests against a powerful, US-led West.

The other serious mistake the USA made was in failing to help Russia navigate an incredibly difficult transition from a centralized, state-socialist economy to a decentralized, market-based capitalist one. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin had begged for loans and technical help to deal with this complex challenge. After an internal debate, the Bush administration decided that while it would not hinder Russia’s transition, it would not to help it either. Let Russia sink or swim–swallow the full bitterness of communism’s failure. The result was a horrendous economic collapse–mass impoverishment. Russia’s economy and safety net disintegrated: the longevity of men declined by 10 years. The ultimate result of the chaos that accompanied this collapse was the emergence of a strongman–Putin; a dictator who harsh methods was able to pull a shattered nation together. The world is paying the price for the USA’s short-sided policies

This brings us to the last part of our story. What I have described in these last two sections had to do with relations between Russia and the USA. Those events formed an important backdrop to the current war. But they do not directly address the factors that led to it. The hostilities between Ukraine and Russia did not begin with an attempt by Ukraine to join NATO. But they did grow out of Ukraine’s desire to move westward. The critical events that pushed these two nations toward war took place in 2013-2014. This is when a rebellion against a newly elected Ukrainian president took place. He had been elected on a platform of moving Ukraine closer to the European Union. Instead, he signed an energy and trade pact that tied Ukraine more closely to Russia. The result was a mass uprising that that led to his removal and his flight to Russia. Russia’s reaction to his expulsion and its fear that Ukraine was preparing to move closer to the West, led to sits seizure of the Crimean Peninsula—the home-port of its navy. Shortly thereafter, a separatist movement was launched in Luhansk and Donets (Donbas). The rebels were backed by Russia (the Wagner Group) and a protracted civil war began.

There is one last piece of the puzzle. Why is Russia so intent on controlling Ukraine and acquiring a major part of its territory? In a very thorough and valuable book: “Collapse: the Fall of the Soviet Union:” the author (2021: Zubok) relates an experience that throws light on all of this. As the situation in post-communist Russia was spinning out of control, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote a letter to Yeltsin telling him that the goal of the new Russian government should be to create a Great Russian Nation built on the Eastern Slav ethnicity. This is the ethnicity that, according to Solzhenitsyn, was the “true foundation” of the historic Russian state and culture. He told Yeltsin to dispense with the “mongrels’ (peoples of Central Asia and Far East) and unite the three Eastern Slavic-speaking peoples—Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. Yeltsin, who was Putin’s mentor and who appointed him President, was very impressed with the Solzhenitsyn letter. I believe this played a critical role in Putin’s thinking. If Russia was to become a truly great power again, it would need to incorporate the Ukraine–at least the eastern part. Putin is not , as is widely believed, trying to reconstitute the USSR: he is trying to resurrect the core of Tsarist Russia.

The war in Ukraine has implications that go beyond its impact on the two nations involved. Russia’s attempt to seize 1/5 of Ukraine’s territory by military means threatens to nullify the fundamental principle that has guided international relations since WWII–that no nation can be allowed to acquire the territory of another by force. Adherence to this principle has kept peace in Europe for 85 years–the longest period without a war between major European powers since the formation of the modern European state system. And now that principle is threatened. Not just by Putin, but by Trump as well. Trump’s foolish musings about invading Canada, Greenland and Panama work to undermine this critical principle.

Ukraine’s struggle to maintain its territorial integrity is part of a struggle to maintain a global order that is governed by rules rather than by might makes right.