Critique of the Ukraine War — Flagrantly Provoked; Essentially Unjustified; Strategic Fiasco; Humanity-Endangering.
A. Was the Ukrainian war provoked?
The return of the clash for global dominion, fought now on Ukraine’s land with destructive systemic implications, was provoked by Washington’s’ planned triumphalist response to Gorbachev’s humanity-saving revolution. As viewed from the Kremlin, Russia was starkly pushed, intensively and incessantly, into a confrontation by the continuously aggressive and expanding Western powers (read, U.S.) — and on geopolitical and strategic terms, basically, this is a founded assertion.
From the initial forays of NATO designed to include former Warsaw Pact’s countries during B. Clinton’s administration; through the open neo-Neocon (who I termed “Bluenecks”) global dominance policies during the Bush-Cheney regime; continuing with Obama’s administration aggressive push to deploy BMD systems near Russia’s borders (and to covertly haul Ukraine out of Moscow’s sphere of influence); with a temporary partial, typically perplexing, pause during Trump’s rule; and up to Biden’s gradual (though gaining force with the nearing of the election) anti-Russian containment doctrine, it is hard to locate in post-WWII records a more provoked (meaning unnecessary on geopolitical, strategic or economic considerations), superpowers’ confrontation, and that includes the Cuban Missile Crisis. Why so?
First and prime, the exploitive expansion of NATO was, and still is, the most morally sullied and humanity endangering geopolitical move in history. In the mid-Nineties — just five years after the Soviet Union unilaterally withdrew its forces (which the Pentagon assessed as capable of taking all of Western Europe) all the way back east of Ukraine, with the “End of History” in its sights, the U.S. issued a formal call for NATO’s unlimited expansion. The fact that the expansion was ardently sought by the governments in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary does not make the move less offensive in a moral-historical deliberation than an “invitation” by Cuba to the Soviet Union to deploy nuclear missiles on its land or a call by Syria for Iran to establish a full “defensive alliance” with military bases and missile silos — NATO’s expansion is even more bellicose, actually.
On April 17, 2010, on “Fox News” of all places, President George H.W. Bush was speaking on the reasons for the end of the Cold War. After being goaded by the blond interviewer to claim that the decision to deploy Pershing missiles in Europe frightened Warsaw Pact into retreat and brought down the Soviet Union, he answered with an exceptional integrity: “But it was Gorbachev, with his Perestroika and Glasnost, he carried the day. And if it was not for his vision it [the end of the Cold War] would not have happened.” In stark contrast, now, in a NYT’s Op-Ed [Feb 28. 2023] the neo-Con B. Stephens declares the Russian invasion as an attempt to mollify “the verdict of 1991”. Adjectives like “despicable” and “abhorrent’ don’t really capture the moral-historical travesty of depicting Gorbachev’s noble unilateral stepping down from the race for global dominion as “the verdict of 1991” — it’s beyond berserk Triumphalism, Goebbels Ghoul.
An abhorrent triumphalist rape of noble Gorbachev’s Universalistic Message, of his revolution that, with R. Reagan and G. Bush acquiescent, took the world from the brink of doom and opened a possible course to the end of the nuclear race and the waning of Realism’s rule in history. The dragon teeth of the Ukraine war and the return of the age of global confrontations were sowed then. Thus, NATO’s expansion by itself is a sufficient condition for declaring the Ukraine invasion as a provoked act of war (though, nevertheless, not as a justified act of war. On that, I will explain in the next section).
Second, NATO’s expansion was indeed a monster geostrategic provocation, but it did not end with a mere formal enlargement of the “defensive alliance” , how could it? The malign enlargement metastasized with an extreme strategically provocative move, the U.S. deployment of anti-Missile systems in Eastern Europe, on the borders of Russia. Since about 2010, I have written, in growing concern, that the deployment is a triumphalist asinine neocon spirited, humanity-endangering maneuver — the like of which R. Perle and other consoles of nuclear war have thought about before.
Here is what I have written eight years ago [May 15, 2015, as a consultant to an international investment group (on, basically, the World System)]: “As I emphasized for more than 5 years, the Kremlin views the American BMD program in Eastern Europe [the anti-Missile systems deployment] as a clear and immediate threat to its deterrence posture. Putin’s reaction this time around was more sharp and aggressive than the usual Russian protests. Speaking before defense and military industry officials, Putin made it clear that the American system is aiming ‘to start a new arms race’.
Indeed, the Kremlin used before, in that context, this kind of language; however, Putin also made an ominous comment stating that: ‘until now, those taking such decisions [meaning, the Americans] have lived in a calm, fairly well-off and in safety. Now… we are forced to think how to neutralize emerging threats to the Russian Federation’. In strategic-operational terms, ‘to neutralize’ means to develop and deploy nuclear weapons with the highest capabilities to penetrate the BMD system and/or to act to render the system nonoperational — short of nuclear attack, these are the most destabilizing steps in a superpowers’ nuclear deterrence policies, no less.”
No doubt, Putin was provoked, and by the mid last decade, his regime made its combination of alarm and rage as clear as a thousand suns. BTW, and for context, similar warning by me were blocked, and later I was ghosted, by the NYT’s editors. [See mine, “Life Are Not That Dull Anymore”, MEDIUM, May 13, 2022]
Third, considering the “De-Nazification” agenda of Putin’s reasons for war. Let me make it clear, from the start, that indeed todays “Far Right” Ukrainian factions (from Azov military force to the extreme parliamentarian sections) are not Nazis. They are, however, the self-proclaimed and proud offspring of the Ukrainian Nazis per-se and Nazi-collaborators - prominent among them S. Bandera’s followers and volunteers to the Waffen-S.S. divisions. More than in any other occupied land, the Ukrainian Nazi-collaborators served as an auxiliary of the Nazi war machine and as the henchmen for Hitler’s extermination campaign in the “Bloodlands”. Now, boulevards were named after them and statues are erected to commemorate their glory all over Ukraine. One can envision Pennsylvania Av. in D.C. being named after Robert. E. Lee, or, actually, after a most cruel slave-owner, to grasp the influence of the Nazi Ukraine allies on the yellow and blue nation.
Not only were the Azov battalion, and other neo-Nazis derivations, definitely among the central operatives in the 2014 Maiden uprising that brought down the pro-Russian government in Kiev, by now, they are recognized as the valiant spearhead of the Ukrainian fighting forces. As the Bolsheviks in the Communist Revolution and the “Settlers” in Israeli politics, they may represent a fraction of the population, but, in crisis, they take over and design the historical path of the nation. After the war is over, if conventionally that is, Zelensky, Jewish origins or not, fate will be decided by heroes-of-the-Ukrainian people — the Azovstal Spartans.
That said, I consider that expunging Ukraine’s Nazis is mostly a propaganda maneuver by the Kremlin — kind of the way “War against Terror” was used for justifying killing and displacing millions all over the globe by the White House. Nevertheless, there is no denial of the frenzied anti-Russian spirit embedded in the “far right” factions of Ukraine. Among the ghastly unforgettable scenes from the past (2014) and future Ukrainian politics is one in which a crowd at a square in a western Ukrainian city is enthusiastically toppling down a statue of a Soviet soldier. The battle-uniformed soldier is holding up a baby, the statue is in memory of the Red Army millions who died for the victory that drove the Nazi legions out of Ukraine all the way to Berlin. Indeed, for the children and grandchildren of the Great Patriotic War survivors, that is a provocation enough.
NATO’s (American) Geopolitical exploitive expansion; Geostrategic aggressive (humanity endangering) deployment of BMD; Nazi collaborators blatant national idolization — hardly can get more provocative than that. If so, was the Russian invasion justified? Essentially, not. On that, in the next section of the Critique.
[To be continued]
B. Was the Ukrainian Invasion Justified in term of Just War?
As I was put under “limited exposure” (which was rather limited, to begin with) by the MEDIUM’s illustrious Trust and Safety group [for metaphorically suggesting that the humanity-endangering promoters of a nuclear “exchange” in Ukraine, should be sent to a ‘reeducation camp’ with the Wagner Group (now, alas, for that matter, defunct) and then the Wagnerians should be let to enjoy the comforts of a C.I.A. “black site”] ’I’ve not published yet the full article on whether the invasion was justified or not. I’ll use the editing function here in order to put a succinct summary of it:
Why should a provoked international power, embarking on a strategic counter move, nevertheless, be declared as warranting being judged, and probably recorded, as an aggressor in terms of Just War deliberations?
Four fundamental reasons: A. because the invasion was not necessary as a preemptive move to break a clear and immediate danger to Russia’s existential interests. B. because a full invasion was not the necessary preventive move to counter a perceived looming threat to Russia’s security and its national interests; C. because there were other options. Putin’s Russia could use more efficient, appropriate, adequate and just geopolitical, geostrategic and military moves and means to counter NATO’s jingoistic expansion and the West’s triumphalist encroachment (as I emphasized, while exploiting and debasing Gorbachev’s Universalistic revolution) on Russia. D. because full invasion was a rather extreme and inflated move to fulfil a “Duty to Protect” to the Russian-oriented population in the Donbas region. E. because, as expected, Putin’s rule in Russia is in a process of deteriorating from an relatively flexible autocracy to Zarist-like dictatorship.
That’s the sum of it. See, among other: https://medium.com/@meirstieglitz/humanity-you-killed-gorbachevs-universalist-vision-prepare-to-die-26ac6651f637 ; https://medium.com/@meirstieglitz/the-bluenecks-g%C3%B6tterd%C3%A4mmerung-6249bd6a85f6