To the Editor:
Following up my column in the August issue: I hope readers are not so quick as the editor was to dismiss all the historical notes in the public record, some cited by me, about how the US and allies planned and provoked the Ukraine war for years. Nor should they agree to the editor’s ahistorical claim that Russia fired “the first shot”—overlooking the violent U.S.-sponsored 2014 Maidan coup, during which the rooftop riflemen shot both police and protestors; then in May 2014 the neo-Nazis drove scores of anti-coup Ukrainians into the Odessa trade center building before burning them alive. This began a period of NATO military build-up and the bombardment of eastern Ukraine, leading to 14,000 mostly civilian deaths prior to February 2022. Attentive readers can dismiss the facile statement that Russia fired the first shot and also dismiss the endlessly repeated lie that Russian intervention was “unprovoked.”
“The war on Russia”—my description of the overall campaign and narrative—was edited out, yet that is what has driven the Ukraine conflict since the breakup of the USSR. The US sponsored another coup in a nation next to Russia, then armed it to the teeth and provoked Russia for years. But our extreme economic sanctions have not been effective this time, in fact have harmed Europe especially, and the US now sees its unfortunate proxy Ukraine losing disastrously. It’s time to take an honest look at why we’ve created another debacle, fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian while improving nothing but the war industry.
Our foremost late-20th-century diplomat, George Kennan, warned in 1997 that expansion of NATO including Ukraine would be “the most consequential error of the post-Cold War period.” The solution in Ukraine, neutrality, would have been similar to that achieved after WWII for Austria, another highly contested nation. In Ukraine, Yanukovich sought compromise, with trade relations both east and west, before he was overthrown in 2014.
U.S. rulers and much of the public are in the grip of a doctrine of global superiority. It’s a powerful drug, reinforced with ubiquitous propaganda, and even formerly anti-war voices swallow it. The US barely pretends to conduct diplomacy, because diplomacy requires considering other nations’ views—something we bypass, instead applying sanctions and military violence until either the target nation capitulates, or we are forced to pause or retreat. Respect for Russia’s or China’s security needs, for example, is something our leaders seem incapable of considering, while we continue to promote color revolutions in bordering, smaller nation—color revolutions being part of imperial strategy, explained in such books as Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
Ukraine is being destroyed, another ugly chapter in the long U.S. series of overseas coups and aggressive wars, and it will not recover anytime soon. Despite U.S./NATO sponsoring of more escalation against Russia and dramatic feints and terrorist attacks, while adding to half a million Ukrainian casualties, here at home I see less and less of cheap pro-war emotions and flying of the Ukraine flag.
There aren’t enough anti-war voices in this country, and even less anti-imperialist education. (A good local example of the latter: in the WAMM summer newsletter editor Mary Beaudoin summarizes “Ukraine for Sale,” the U.S. imperialist agenda of opening up Ukraine farmland ownership to Western financial and agribusiness corporations.)
Look beyond the mainstream media narrative. Critical journalists, scholars and former diplomats are available for deeper understanding, but not through “approved” sources. One such person with decades of international experience, Jeffrey Sachs, described the Biden administration actions on Ukraine and Russia and its ignoring of the UN as “shameful, lying, and arrogant.” Hence my question last time: What disaster, perhaps financial, will shock our rulers out of their warring, dead-end path?
Dave Gutknecht
Dave Gutknecht was politically motivated and a skeptic from an early age, sharing MLK’s 1967 conclusion that the US is the chief source of violence in the world. An anti-draft leader, he won an important case at the US Supreme Court (1970), but his continued resistance earned him another conviction and sentence, after which he spent 1972-73 in hiding, in county jail, in federal prison and in a halfway house. This was followed by a 50-year career focused on strengthening food cooperatives and local food economies.
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Editor’s Note:
Most people and Wikipedia agree that:
Why was Viktor Yanukovych removed?
In November 2013, Yanukovych made a sudden decision, amidst economic pressure from Russia, to withdraw from signing an association agreement with the EU and instead accept a Russian trade deal and loan bailout. This sparked mass protests against him that ultimately led to his ousting as President.
I don’t think you can say the Maidan protests were a CIA plot. I’m sure CIA operatives were involved at some point. Paul Manafort was “advising” Yanukovych at the time. Does that mean Russia was under the influence of the Nixon Rat Pack? I think, like most Americans, you overstate our influence and importance on world events.
I’m not clear on how much the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade militarily provoked Russia before 2013. But we do know Russia invaded and occupied Crimea in March of 2014. I don’t think we can support the military invasion and occupation of another country by the U S or Russia. Military aggression has to be condemned as an instrument of state policy.
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