I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading these past few months, trying to understand the devastating conflict unfolding in Ukraine. War is the most destructive force human beings can unleash, and whenever and wherever it erupts it is always a tragedy.
If we are opposed to war (and I think we should be), then there are two important questions, above all others, that we have to ask when one breaks out: how did it start, and how can it end? With these questions in mind, it has been bewildering to see the coverage provided by Western state and corporate media and spreading out through countless Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube accounts. If we want to understand the conflict in Ukraine, then facts and unbiased analysis are of utmost importance. When surveying the Western media landscape it’s sad to say that, right now, these things are in short supply.
In North America and much of Europe we’re being offered a very simple narrative about the war in Ukraine: evil Russians invaded Ukraine for no legitimate reason. For those needing some kind of rationale, we’re offered the choice between:
- Putin is a madman, or
- Putin is a psychopath
Beyond a deranged proclivity for armed aggression, you can also believe that Putin is a frustrated Stalin fan-boy, incensed at the Soviet Union’s dissolution and eager to restore the old Empire to its former glory. Days after the February 24th “special military operation” started, a chorus of public commentators were saying “he won’t stop at Ukraine!” In a post on my own Facebook page an otherwise intelligent friend mused that, because Russia didn’t send enough troops to occupy the entire country, Putin must be planning the genocide of millions of Ukrainians in order to sufficiently thin out the population (he said this with all seriousness). It is the proverbial End Times we are told… the worst war in Europe since WWII… the rise of a New Hitler.
In the face of this monstrous existential threat to all that is right and good, our task is equally clear. Volodomr Zelensky is a “hero”, the Ukrainian soliders are noble defenders of their motherland, and the entire world needs to side with them in cursing the Russians, flooding the country with advanced weapons systems, and shouting “Slava Ukraini!” (…but just don’t ask where this phrase comes from).
At the same time it is also clear that the entire “free world” needs to isolate Russia, sanction its people, crush its economy, break its military, and even overthrow its government. No stone should be left unturned to counter Russia’s villainy. Russian artists have to be blackmailed into publicly reciting purity oaths, or else fired. Russian athletes need to be hounded from international sports teams and events. Russian students have to be punished and expelled from our schools. All of this is needed, none of it is enough. The entire country, the entire people, have to pay.
Russophobia: Framing the Narrative
As a professor who teaches media studies, I know that we’ve already been primed for the kind of anti-Russian sentiment we’re now seeing, that in truth it comes to us as naturally as breathing. From a young age North Americans are taught to hate and fear Russians. As a child the cartoon villains I watched were named Boris and Natasha. The equally cartoonish villains in the wrestling shows I loved were also Russian. In nearly every detective show and Hollywood action film I saw, the villains were Russian. Russian mobsters. Russian oligarchs. Highly-deadly, emotionless Russian assassins.
From countless examples in popular culture I learned that Russians were brutish and inhuman. When I was growing up I also learned that Russians were Godless Commies – foot-soldiers in the spread of an Evil Empire that wanted to swallow up the free world and make us all drive small, boxy cars and wait in long lines for poorly-made consumer goods. Since 2016 I’ve been hearing that Russians have rigged elections, subverted democracy, and lurked behind nearly every instance of hacking and even internet trolling. With all of this practice, is it any wonder how quickly we’ve fallen in line with the dominant narrative on Ukraine?
In this environment of anti-Russian hysteria, statements that deviate from the mainstream Western position on the war are being met with charges of “Putin propaganda”. Attempts to point to the complex history leading up to the conflict or the prominent role played by the United States, NATO, and the Ukrainian far-right, are similarly dismissed as Russian propaganda. Instead, we are told to take as gospel truth the direct communications of American and European politicians, the corporate media, the U.S. State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon… all paragons of truth and transparency, of course. (you’ll forgive me a bit of sarcasm there).
Understanding War and Geopolitics
In addition to teaching, for over 20 years I’ve been an anti-war activist and student of international relations. My introduction to this field came in the early 90’s as an undergraduate journalist in University. I was assigned to cover a Timorese student leader speaking out about the genocide perpetrated against his people by the Indonesian military. For me his presentation was a crash-course in the brutal realities of geopolitics and the ways in which media become complicit in international crimes against humanity.
The American and Canadian governments were supporting Indonesia’s brutal war against East Timor, providing weapons and diplomatic cover. Not surprisingly, you wouldn’t read anything about this in mainstream media sources – a fact well illustrated by Noam Chomsky in the documentary Manufacturing Consent. Through East Timor I found out that the West is very often the “bad guy” in international conflicts. I learned that the United States is in fact an aggressive military power that routinely flaunts international law. I learned that Canada and other NATO allies are usually supportive lackeys in these imperial adventures, and that corporate and state media in North America work overtime to conceal these damning truths.
Since Timor, we’ve witnessed the devastating effects of U.S. imperialism time and again – in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the 2002 U.S. – backed coup in Venezuela, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the 2004 Canadian and American – backed coup in Haiti, the 2009 American-backed coup in Honduras, the 2011 overthrow of Libya’s government by NATO, the 2011 U.S. – backed attempt to overthrow the Syrian government, the 2019 U.S. – backed coup in Bolivia, and another U.S-backed coup attempt in Venezuela in 2020. Apart from overt military intervention, the U.S. and its allies also regularly intervene in the politics of other countries – using an array of deadly tools to get “uncooperative” foreign governments to fall in line with U.S. interests. In his book Killing Hope, American professor William Blum details over 70 instances of the United States overthrowing foreign governments since World War II.
American intervention is often more subtle than full-scale military invasion. In his 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, former engineering consultant John Perkins describes how U.S. corporations, in partnership with the National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and World Bank, collude in getting poor countries to accept massive amounts of debt to fund the business and development projects of Western corporations. The ultimate goal is to saddle poor countries with crippling debt, thus making them politically compliant to the wishes of the U.S. and its allies.
When business professionals like Perkins are unsuccessful at bending the will of non-compliant regimes, the tactics are escalated and other operatives are sent in. First are the jackals – covert operatives who work to destabilize governments through violence, assassination, and fomenting social unrest. If these threats are insufficient, then military coups or outright invasion are used. The result, writes Perkins, is like a global criminal racket, a “death economy — one based on wars or the threat of war, debt, and the rape of the earth’s resources.”
The foundation of American Empire rests on this “death economy” – using economic and military power to pillage and extort less powerful nations, to coerce “allies” into arrangements favourable to the Empire, and to weaken and destroy potential competitors. Competitors are any countries that refuse to acquiesce to American dominance and that dare to chart a sovereign political course. The weaker of these intransigent competitor nations are generally dealt with through force – taking their place among the victims of U.S. military intervention listed above. However, if a country is both defiant and somehow strong enough to resist the coercive economic and military power of U.S. Empire, then it attains the status of hated enemy. In the present day, Russia and China most fit this role, with Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela being lesser villains.
In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Herman note that hatred of national enemies comprises a powerful “filter” through which political and media discourse in the United States passes. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Communist China were vilified as both competitor states and as ideological threats to the capitalist world order. This led to deeply biased news reporting and consistently negative representations in art and entertainment.
After the Cold War ended, and Russia and China emerged as independent post-Communist nations and participants in the global capitalist economy, anti-Communist rhetoric has been replaced with an intensified Russophobia and Sinophobia. As discussed above, Russia is particularly singled out for this cultural hatchet-job, due to the threat of its greater ties to Europe, and its willingness to use military power to counter U.S. imperial objectives, such as in Syria. Because of the hostile filter that all information about Russia and China passes through in North America, the news we get is deeply biased. Knowing this, it is important to not take it at face value, and to question everything.
Full Spectrum Dominance
To students of geopolitics and of the American Empire, everything I’ve said so far is uncontroversial and commonly known. The problem is that most North Americans haven’t studied these things, don’t know the history, and only have state and corporate information sources to rely on. Because of this, they remain plugged into a deceptive Matrix and ignorant of the “world of the real”. In this real world, the United States is locked in a global power struggle with Russia and China, and is using political, economic, cultural, and military resources to destroy these competitors. Similarly, Russia and China are also powerful states, and project this power beyond their borders and into the affairs of nearby states.
It is important to note that none of these powerful countries are pure moral actors. Russia and China are not above scrutiny, criticism, and even, in some cases, condemnation. The Communist Party of China, and the Han Chinese majority it represents, have been brutal in their suppression of Tibetan and Uyghur communities. From the 18th century to the Soviet era, Russia was an Empire. To think that all of the former USSR and Warsaw Pact members were willing recipients of Russian political domination is pure fantasy, and the history of Russian imperialism toward Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic explains the acute Russophobia expressed by nationalists in these countries.
However, while it is true that the U.S., Russia and China are all powerful states with extra-territorial interests and influence, it is equally true that there is a massive difference in the projection of this influence. In this regard, the United States’ footprint in international affairs is orders of magnitude greater than that of either Russia or China. In 2021 the U.S. spent $801 billion on its military, while China spent $293 billion and Russia spent only $65.9 billion. The U.S. maintains over 750 military bases in at least 80 countries, and has approximately 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries. In contrast, Russia has 21 military bases outside of its borders, while China has only one, in Djibouti. It is a simple fact that neither Russia nor China comes remotely close to the United States in using military and economic force to overthrow the governments of other sovereign nations. In addition, only the United States has publicly stated, and consistently enforced, its desire to exert control over the entire planet.
The pursuit of global dominance has driven U.S. foreign policy since at least the Second World War. In his book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, military analyst William Engdahl reveals that before WWII even ended, Britain and the United States were planning a war for global supremacy against the Soviet Union. Shortly after the war ended, the pursuit of this supremacy became official government policy. In 1948, George F. Keenan wrote in a highly classified U.S. State Department memorandum:
We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population … In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
Keenan’s memo describes a policy of American Exceptionalism, in which the United States acts ruthlessly to protect its national interests and to structure international relations in its favour. This realist politics continued through subsequent decades, influencing Henry Kissinger, National Security advisor to Richard Nixon, who oversaw the disastrous Vietnam War and famously stated “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”. Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security advisor to Jimmy Carter and Barak Obama, perpetuated the exceptionalist foreign policy, conceiving of Eurasia as a “grand chessboard” and luring the Soviet Union into a devastating 10 year war in Afghanistan.
In 1998, the quest for global hegemony again surfaced in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) – a think-tank comprised of neoconservative intellectuals, many of whom would later occupy positions in the Bush-Cheney government. PNAC released a document, Rebuilding America’s Defences, that advocated for a policy of “full spectrum dominance” – American global supremacy in conventional, nuclear, cyberspace, and space warfare. This political goal led to the illegal and disastrous U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – costing hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths and trillions of dollars. The goal of full spectrum dominance continues to this day, and colours all of the information, representations, and analysis that Westerners receive on Russia and China.
The Current Crisis
The American policy of global dominance, and the branding of Russia as a hated enemy, have led to a steady drum-beat of censorship, misinformation, and over-simplification concerning the Ukraine war. It has almost been enough to mask the horrible truth of our current situation. Thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers are being killed in a needless conflict that could easily have been avoided. Battle lines are being drawn and entrenched between NATO and an emerging Russia/China geopolitical bloc. Economic chaos is being unleashed across the globe, as fuel and food prices soar. Finally, as billions of dollars of advanced weaponry flow into Ukraine from NATO member countries, it seems increasingly likely that this conflict will extend, expand, and bring the entire planet to the brink of nuclear annihilation. For those who understand international relations and Great Power politics – the stakes, and the risks, could not possibly be higher.
If we want to stop this war, and more importantly win the peace in Ukraine, then a critical first step is to understand the conflict’s roots. Given how powerful the Western narrative of the war is, and how resistant many people seem to be to alternative perspectives, it makes sense to go through each piece of the narrative separately and look for the evidence for or against. For the rest of the article I will examine, in turn, the history of the USSR and Ukraine, the role played by NATO expansion, the 2014 EuroMaidan uprising and coup, the seizure of Crimea, the post-coup government and its relation to neo-nazis and the far right, the battle against the Donbas Republics, and finally, the diplomatic and military events that immediately preceded Russia’s February 24th invasion.
Ukraine in the USSR
One of the arguments used to shout down challengers of the Western narrative on Ukraine is to point to the historic abuses that Ukrainians have suffered at the hands of Imperial and Soviet Russia. In particular, the Holodomor, a horrible famine that occurred in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, is used as an example of Russia’s genocidal intentions toward Ukrainians. The number of people who died in the famine is contested, with early estimates suggesting up to 15 or 20 million, and more recent estimates arguing for approximately 4 million. What is undisputed is that a widespread famine gripped Ukraine in the years of the Holodomor, that a significant portion of the population starved to death, and that the entire tragedy was covered up by the Soviet government of the day.
Although causes of the famine are also hotly contested, nearly every scholar includes Soviet policies that forced collectivization of independent farms and dealt harsh penalties for disobeying food quotas. It is also acknowledged that drought affected the harvest in those years. Ukraine and 15 other countries now consider the Holodomor to be an act of genocide – deliberately conducted by Stalin to crush Ukrainian nationalists. However, this characterization is controversial and hotly debated, with many scholars considering the event a crime against humanity, but one that stemmed largely from poorly devised, authoritarian Soviet policies, not from a desire to murder Ukrainians en masse.
Despite the ongoing scholarly debate, the Holodomor and associated incidents of Stalinist repression in Ukraine remain historical facts. This is important to acknowledge, as the suffering experienced by Eastern Europeans under Soviet rule understandably contributes to a suspicion of Russian motives. For some, this history has been used to fuel hatred for all ethnic Russians.
To Eastern Europeans who experienced Russian Imperialism and resisted Soviet rule, Russia is the devil they know, whereas the Imperialism of the United States and NATO can be an abstract thing. Because of this, it is not unusual to be challenged by Eastern European nationalists when suggesting a different narrative for the 2022 invasion. These attacks tend to go into gruesome and minute detail concerning Stalinist atrocities, and then to equate modern day Russia with the Soviet Union, and Vladimir Putin with Stalin. Completely missing from these attacks is any mention of the U.S. or NATO as Imperialist forces with their own strategic objectives in the region.
While it is important to acknowledge the past crimes committed by Soviet Russia against Ukraine, it is equally important to accept the fact that the Soviet Union has not existed for over 30 years and Russia has not been a Communist country for about as long. Ukraine emerged an independent country after the collapse of the USSR. At this time Ukraine declared itself a neutral state, having good relations with both Russia and NATO.
This is not to say that after the USSR collapsed Russia stopped trying to influence Ukraine and its other neighbours and to meddle in their political affairs. Russia has certainly done both, and this is a legitimate grievance of nationalist and West-leaning Ukrainians. Having said this though, there is no credible evidence that post-USSR Russia, or more recently Putin, have been seeking to militarily dominate Ukraine or the countries surrounding them or to incorporate them into a revived Empire. In fact, as we’ll see below, evidence suggests that for the past 15 years Putin has been doing everything he can to avoid a war in Eastern Europe. For this reason, the argument of historical grievances and historical equivalences is unconvincing, and we have to look elsewhere for explanations for the 2022 Russian invasion.
The Role of NATO Expansion and Nuclear War
Another assertion made by defenders of the mainstream Western narrative on Ukraine is that NATO expansion has absolutely nothing to do with the conflict. A statement often made is that “any country should have the right to join whatever international association they want to”. Couched this way, Russia’s resistance to Ukraine joining NATO is just another instance of meddling in Ukraine’s sovereign affairs. It reinforces the historical grievance narrative, and suggests that Putin’s problem with NATO is aggressive, and all about control. In order to evaluate this perspective and to understand NATO’s real role in the current conflict, we’ll have to examine the Cold War relationship between NATO and the USSR and the critical moments when the Soviet Empire was crumbling and Ukraine was gaining its independence.
The roots of the conflict today trace back to World War II, when, as mentioned above, the United States was already planning a military showdown with the Soviet Union. In August of 1945, the U.S. used nuclear weapons to obliterate the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a move designed to end the war in the south pacific, but also to send an intimidating message to the USSR – the United States was militarily dominant and willing to use nuclear weapons to destroy civilian populations.
Later in 1945, General Eisenhower drafted a plan for an immediate nuclear assault on Russia. Code-named Plan Totality, it was designed to completely destroy 20 major cities. President Truman immediately used this military leverage, threatening a nuclear strike if Russia did not retreat from Iran in 48 hours. In the years following WWII, American generals repeatedly advocated using nuclear weapons on Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam. It is a miracle that, at each point, cooler heads were able to prevail and to prevent a repeat of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Thus, immediately following World War II, the Americans had already signalled their intentions toward global dominance and positioned themselves as an existential threat to the Soviet Union. The Soviet’s successful testing of a nuclear weapon in 1949 arguably saved them from an American nuclear first strike. As Russia developed ballistic missile capabilities in 1957, the ideas of American nuclear dominance, and of a first-strike capability, temporarily receded. The Cold War then became an arms race, with the USSR and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 1949 as a military alliance to opposed the Soviet Union, spending massive amounts to develop and deploy increasingly advanced nuclear weapons.
The era of “mutually assured destruction”, or what some called “the balance of terror” began. The U.S. strategy at this time shifted toward seeking a defence against nuclear attack – Reagan’s infamous Star Wars program. Despite the defensive nature of Star Wars, the goal of U.S. nuclear arms development was always to reclaim the first-strike advantage by being able to neutralize a Russian counter-strike.
During the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, Russian and American leaders started trying to limit the scope of each country’s nuclear arsenal. This was an acknowledgement that the “balance of terror” between the two super-powers, while not ideal, was a stable international situation and that a proliferation of anti-ballistic missile technology could upset that balance and make a first-strike option seem feasible. In 1972 the SALT I talks led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty which limited defensive and offensive missiles. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was significant in outlawing an entire class of medium-range weapons. By 1991, the START I treaty again limited the arsenals of both sides.
The Cold War arms race eventually bankrupted the USSR, causing Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev to first attempt to save, and then reluctantly disband, the union. In 1990 talks with the U.S. and NATO about the reunification of East and West Germany, Gorbachev was assured by U.S. officials that NATO would not expand east of Germany. After dissolution of the USSR, Russian president Boris Yeltsin continued to negotiate with the U.S. and NATO, seeking to transition away from the Cold War and toward a new era of peace and stability in Europe. At the time it was hoped that, with dissolution of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, NATO would also disband. There was hopeful talk of a “peace dividend” as Cold War military alliances were dismantled and military budgets reduced.
Unfortunately, in 1991 the U.S. had very different plans. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, instead of pursuing peace with Russia, the U.S and NATO pursued a policy intended to completely destroy Russia. The goal was to dismantle the country and its military power and to remove it once and for all as a competitor to U.S. dominance in Eurasia. To this end, the U.S. first used the International Monetary Fund to enforce harsh neoliberal reforms on the Russian economy. These included a brutal austerity that had devastating effects on the health of the Russian population, and also a fire-sale of state assets to American banks and Russian oligarchs.
Next, first in 1995 and later in 1999, NATO intervened militarily in Yugoslavia, demonstrating the alliance’s willingness to advance its European interests on the battlefield. Finally, the U.S. moved to integrate as many post-Soviet republics into NATO as it could, a plan it had been formulating since the 1980s. In the late 1990s this plan was given extra impetus by the PNAC neoconservatives, who were also pushing for a renewed commitment to nuclear dominance. With the election of George W. Bush, PNAC gained a grip on the White House and Pentagon. By 2001, the United States had unilaterally withdrawn from the ABM Treaty with Russia. In Full Spectrum Dominance, Engdhal notes that: “By 2004 Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were all in NATO, with the Republic of Georgia being groomed to join.”
The eastward expansion of NATO was a highly controversial strategy among foreign affairs experts, and during the 1990s, several high-ranking U.S. politicians and government staff, including staunch conservatives and Cold Warriors, expressed deep concerns. Eugene Puryear writes:
In 1998 George Kenan, the chief architect of the Cold War, stated that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe was a “tragic mistake,” that “no one was threatening anyone else,” and that “of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.“
Despite this kind of criticism, the expansion occurred, leading to increasingly candid concerns being expressed by Vladimir Putin, who in 2007 called NATO’s spread “a serious provocation”. Putin wondered at the broken promises that had been made to Russia by Washington, and warned that the U.S.’s intention to place advanced missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic was a dangerous destabilization of the nuclear balance that existed between the two countries.
Putin’s warnings fell on deaf ears, and by 2008, George W. Bush publicly announced that Ukraine and Georgia would also become NATO members. Putin’s response to this statement was unequivocal, calling NATO’s expansion to the Russian border a “direct threat”. In addition, 2008 saw the U.S. back a war in the Baltics, right on Russia’s doorstep, as Georgia invaded its neighbour South Ossetia. Since 2003, the U.S. had been funding and arming the Georgian military and pro-Western political parties. Millions in U.S. cash and the work of several American NGOs led to the 2003 “Rose Revolution” that installed the pro-Western, pro-NATO government of Mikheil Saakashvili.
The other massive event that has structured the geopolitical landscape since 2000 is the “War on Terror” – a sweeping use of unilateral military power by the United States and its NATO allies. In a little over a decade, Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded and occupied, Libya was bombed and its government overthrown, the U.S. backed out of an armaments treaty with Iran, and the government of Syria was the target of a Washington-backed regime-change war. These conflicts were launched in flagrant violation of international law, instead justified by the “Bush Doctrine” of pre-emptive war. It is no surprise that, in the face of this Western military onslaught, Putin made the following remarks at the Munich Conference on Security in 2007:
Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?
During the same speech Putin also explicitly mentioned the threat of new NATO missile systems being installed in Eastern Europe, stating: “Plans to expand certain elements of the anti-missile defence system to Europe cannot help but disturb us. Who needs the next step of what would be, in this case, an inevitable arms race?”
When considering the history detailed above, what can we make of Western assertions that NATO expansion has no role to play in the current Ukraine conflict? Given the United States’ official (if unstated) policy of dismantling or destroying the Russian state, their unilateral re-kindling of the nuclear arms race, their goal of pursuing a nuclear first-strike capability against Moscow, and the repeated use of unlawful military force by the U.S and NATO, it is hard to see how NATO’s steady eastward expansion could not be perceived as an existential threat by Russia. This has been explicitly and consistently stated by Russia for over 30 years. It is also acknowledged by numerous U.S. government and military officials, some of whom have spoken out publicly at the dangerous and tragic nature of the expansionist policy. A number of these American critics have also explicitly stated that Ukraine’s membership in NATO would lead to war. Given these facts, the Western narrative on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is absurd in it’s assertion that NATO has nothing to do with the conflict. We may agree or disagree with the U.S. and NATO’s geopolitical goals, but to deny their critical role in the present day conflict is simply not a serious way of looking at the world. The United States and NATO are key instigators of the war in Ukraine.
The 2014 EuroMaidan
Apart from expanding the NATO military alliance toward Russia’s borders, intensifying the nuclear arms race, and strengthening its first-strike capability, the United States has also been using more covert means to achieve its geopolitical objectives in Europe. After fomenting pro-Western revolutions in Serbia in 2001 and Georgia in 2003, in 2004, the U.S. saw an opportunity to establish a political beachhead in Ukraine by backing the presidential bid of Victor Yushchenko. Yushchenko lost a hotly-contested election, but U.S.-backed groups successfully protested in the streets and petitioned for another election, which Yushchenko narrowly won.
The entire campaign was orchestrated by American PR firms and funded by the usual U.S. NGOs that support regime-change operations, to the tune of over $20 million. This “Orange Revolution” (so-named because of the colour of Yuschenko’s campaign materials) was just the start of intensive U.S. intervention in the political affairs of Ukraine. In 2013, Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, bragged that the U.S. had put over $5 billion into Ukraine since 1991, with the goal of installing a regime friendly to Washington.
U.S. involvement in Ukraine reached a fever pitch in the 2013/2014 EuroMaidan protests. In the mainstream Western narrative, these protests were a popular uprising against a corrupt government and a unified expression of Ukraine’s desire for greater Western integration. However, upon examination this characterization is highly suspect, and a more complex picture emerges. In an excellent article in Jacobin, Branko Marcetic details how in 2013/2014 the Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovych, was actually overthrown in a coup conducted by the Ukrainian far right and orchestrated by the United States.
Marcetic notes that, contrary to Western media portrayals of a united and homogeneous Ukraine, the country is split between a pro-Europe, Ukrainian-speaking West and a pro-Russia, Russian-speaking East. Approximately 1/3 of Ukrainians have Russian as their first language, and close to 2/3 speak it regularly. Given this demographic reality, and the reality of their position between the duelling powers of Russia and Europe, politics in Ukraine have a seesaw quality, with pro-Russian and pro-Western candidates rising and falling, and more savvy politicians needing to play a delicate balancing act between these two poles. Ukrainian politics was also notoriously corrupt, with foreign money (from Europe, the U.S., and Russia) and oligarchs influencing much of the rise and fall of various political fortunes.
As president, Victor Yanukovytch was an example of the savvy, yet corrupt brand of Ukrainian politics. Elected in 2010 in a process generally accepted to be fair, he was immediately confronted by the need to balance Russian and European priorities. Yanukovytch rejected the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine and made Russian one of the country’s official languages. However, he also refused several political and economic demands from the Kremlin and continued to pursue EU membership. An issue of particular importance was whether to accept the IMF loan and drastic structural adjustments demanded as a precursor to EU membership, or to accept a more favourable loan from Russia.
Despite being committed to the EU, Yanokovytch ended up choosing the Russian deal. This led to outrage and a popular uprising among pro-West Ukrainians who feared the deal would strengthen Russian control over Ukrainian politics. In 2013 they occupied the Maidan square in Kyiv and demanded the deal be rescinded. However, the political demands of a small, but highly organized group of protestors went much further.
Yanukovytch reacted to the demonstrations with an authoritarian crackdown and a ban on further protest. This only stoked the crowds, which grew in number. Despite this, the Maidan protests did not have majority support, with the eastern, Russian-speaking population being generally opposed. As the protests continued, the far-right Svoboda party and Right Sector, a collection of neo-nazi organizations, took commanding roles. Images of WWII Ukrainian fascist and nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera became ubiquitous, and organized violence began breaking out at the demonstrations.
Multiple sources indicate that organized far-right groups were heavily armed during the protests and led numerous attacks on police. There is also credible evidence that shootings of several protestors blamed on Ukrainian police were in fact carried out by far-right militants. In early 2014 Svoboda and Right Sector began taking over buildings and neighbourhoods, declaring zones of independence, and calling for the overthrow of the Yanukovytch government. By February 22, the Ukrainian parliament voted to strip power from Yanukovytch. On February 27, pro-Western opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk was made prime minister of an interim government.
Washington’s fingerprints were all over the Euromaidan coup. The NED and USAID offices, located right in the US embassy in Ukraine, were active in supporting anti-Yanukovych forces. Both agencies provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to New Citizen – an organization that played a key role in organizing the Maidan protests. After the unrest broke out in December of 2013, Senator’s John McCain and Chris Murphy visited with Svoboda’s fascist leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, to express their support. In February of 2014, Victoria Nuland was caught on tape talking about who should emerge as leader after the coup (not surprisingly, she picked Yatsenyuk), and her attempts to line up U.S. support for it, including getting then Vice President Joe Biden to weigh in. In the call, Nuland also explicitly says that Tyahnybrok, Svoboda, and the Ukrainian neo-nazis should be an integral part of the interim government that would emerge after the coup.
Given the available information, what can we make of the Western narrative that Maidain was simply a patriotic popular uprising against government corruption, and has nothing to do with the present conflict? When looking at Maidan through a critical lens, it is difficult to sustain a black and white reading of the event as either purely a popular uprising against corruption, or purely a foreign-orchestrated coup. What is clear is that both the U.S. and Russia were deeply involved in Ukrainian politics, but that the U.S. efforts to install a Washington-friendly regime were significantly greater in duration, extent, and intensity. In addition, it is clear that the U.S. were prepared to work with Ukraine’s far-right to orchestrate a coup. Evidence also supports the fact that the far-right Svoboda party and neo-nazi militias played a key role in transforming a popular uprising into an armed overthrow of the elected government. The prominent role of the far-right in Ukraine has only intensified since Maidan, and their influence in government, in the streets, and in the military has been pivotal.
The Seizure of Crimea and the Post-Coup Government
Immediately after the Maidan coup, the Crimean peninsula declared independence and then voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. This has been called a violation of international law by Western nations, who consider Crimea to be illegally annexed by Russia. However, the illegality of Crimea’s transition is contested. First, there is the fact that the people of Crimea (over 95% of the 83% of eligible voters that participated) voted in a referendum to first become an independent republic, and then to join Russia.
The declaration of independence by a region within a state is not in itself a violation of international law, and the Ukrainian constitution recognizes the right of people’s to self-determination via referendum. In addition, Crimea had already been declared an Autonomous Republic in 1991, with a special legal status within Ukraine that acknowledged its unique history and close Russian ties. Crimea had been a part of Russia from 1783, until it was transferred to the Ukraine Socialist Republic by Khrushchev in 1954.
Today few apart from Ukrainian ultra-nationalists would consider the people of Crimea to be “conquered” or “occupied” by Russia. It is true that Russia sent troops into Crimea during the Maidan coup, with the stated objective of protecting their military base against the outbreak of civil war. However, this troop movement was legal under the currently existing agreements between Russia and Ukraine, and there is no evidence that Russian forces had any involvement in the referendum that took place.
A 2015 Forbes article referenced two independent polls conducted by prominent Western companies. One poll showed 82% of Crimean respondents approving of the union with Russia, while the other showed 83% support. The author concluded “… it seems without question that the vast majority of Crimeans do not feel they were duped into voting for annexation, and that life with Russia will be better for them and their families than life with Ukraine.” Despite this consistent majority support, Western critics and Ukrainian nationalists continue to question the validity of the Crimean independence and reunification referendum, and to make the status of the peninsula an enduring source of conflict with Russia.
Apart from the secession of Crimea from Ukraine, the other major challenge that emerged post-Maidan was the character of the new government and the increased status of the far-right and paramilitary forces that had staged the coup. While it is inaccurate to say that the post-coup government in Ukraine was a “nazi regime”, it is true that it was heavily influenced by anti-Russian ultra-nationalists. Svoboda members were given one quarter of cabinet positions, with party co-founder Andriy Parubiy given the position of Secretary of the Security and National Defense Committee. Parubiy’s deputy was Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the neo-nazi Right Sector.
Although subsequent Ukrainian elections saw limited support for far-right parties and candidates, these organizations continued to play an important role through their growing paramilitary wing. The first post-coup elections brought Petro Porochenko to power – one of the richest men in Ukraine. Porochenko’s government was hostile to the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine – revoking the status of Russian as an official language and staging a public campaign to rehabilitate Bandera and other nazi collaborators and to celebrate them as national heroes.
In addition to their expanded presence in government, the Ukrainian far-right greatly increased its paramilitary organization after Maidan. The street fighters of Right Sector who were instrumental in overthrowing Yanukovytch were mostly comprised of white supremacist soccer hooligans. However, with U.S cash and weapons, and the patronage of Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, Azov became a well-organized fighting force, along with the Dnipro 1, Dnipro 2, Aidar, and Donbas battalions. These militias prominently espoused nazi ideology and used nazi symbology, such as the swastika and the Azov Wolfsangel – a symbol of the German SS. These right-wing militias immediately began violently attacking their enemies –leftists, liberals, human rights activists, LGBTQ activists, and pro-Russian Ukrainians. In addition, Azov became one of the largest international recruiters and trainers of violent white supremacists in the world. Western corporate media covered all of these developments from 2014 through 2021 – warning of the growing power of the far-right in Ukrainian politics and of the political violence being carried out by Azov and other neo-nazi groups.
The ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian character of the post-coup government and the increasingly unchecked street violence of the neo-nazi militias led to unease among the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, collectively known as the Donbas. Immediately after the patriotic uprising of Maidan, Ukrainians were deeply split on the issue of NATO membership. A March, 2014 Gallup poll of Ukrainians showed that 29% of respondents felt joining NATO was a threat to Ukraine, while only 17% thought it was a source of protection. Opinion was sharply divided between East and West Ukraine, with 46% of respondents in the East considering NATO a threat, and only 8% in the West. Conversely, 39% of Western Ukrainians considered NATO a source of protection, while only 3% of Eastern Ukrainians felt this way.
In early March, 2014, Eastern Ukrainian unease with the coup government led to the creation of two breakaway regions in the Donbas. In the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, separatists held referendums on independence, claiming 89% support in Donetsk and 96% support in Luhansk. The results were condemned by Western governments and media sources, and by the government of Ukraine.
The change in status of Crimea and the Donbas republics is an obvious point of contention within Ukraine and between Russia and NATO. Depending on one’s affiliation, it is easy to call the referendums illegitimate and the secessions illegal. However, it is also important to remember that the right to self-determination is protected for “all peoples” under the United Nations Charter and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Ukrainian state is bound by these laws, and is thus required to respect claims for self-determination of people within its legal boundaries.
Ukraine and the West may question the validity of the formal mechanisms used to claim self-determination in Crimea and the Donbas; however, it must be remembered that these mechanisms were utilized by populations under threat and without the resources that a government normally has to conduct secure state-wide votes. In addition, there is little to suggest that Ukraine would have ever agreed to the independence of its former territories. Indeed, the eight year war that has raged in the Donbas since 2014 shows the unwillingness of Ukraine to respect the autonomy of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. This is itself a violation of international law that needs to be weighed against the violation caused by Russia’s February 24th invasion.
The Battle Against the Donbas Republics
After the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics were formed, the Ukrainian military, along with far-right and neo-nazi militias, began an assault on the Donbas Republics. This war in the east of Ukraine has continued for eight years, and according to the UN has killed in excess of 14,000 Ukrainians, over 3,000 of whom are civilians. 81% of these casualties came from the rebel held territories, showing that the conflict’s burden has fallen most heavily on the breakaway Republics. During this conflict Russia has been supporting the Donbas Republic rebels with military equipment, while the U.S. has been supporting Ukraine and the far-right and nazi militias. In September 2014, the Minsk I agreement was signed to end the conflict in the Donbas. This agreement provided for an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of all armed forces, disarming of all illegal paramilitary groups, and special status for Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine.
Despite a brief ceasefire upon signing the Minsk agreement, fighting in the Donbas quickly resumed. This led to a new ceasefire and new Minsk II agreement in February of 2015, although attacks from both sides again resumed shortly after. Several other short ceasefire agreements were made after Minsk II, but a consistent barrier to peace was the refusal of neo-nazi militants to stop fighting. In 2019 the Azov and other paramilitary battalions refused direct orders from Ukrainian President Volodimyr Zelensky to withdraw from the Donbas. Instead, the far-right began to issue death threats to the President, indicating that they would never retreat from the front.
The Western narrative casts the war in the Donbas as inconsequential to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also suggests that the declarations of independence in Luhansk and Donetsk were orchestrated by Russia, and that the Donbas war started when Russian troops covertly invaded the area. All of these points are easily refuted. First, although the founders of the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics were clearly pro-Russian, Russia flatly refused to annex the territories and instead tried to work on a political resolution with Ukraine. It is also clear from the Minsk I and II agreements that both Republics were willing to remain within Ukraine, provided they received the autonomous status that would enable them to protect their populations.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) never found evidence of Russian units in Ukraine during the Donbas war. Instead, this conflict was fought by Russian speaking Ukrainian separatists, with support from Russia and with a small number of Russians participating. In 2015, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that they had documented 56 Russian soldiers involved since the conflict broke out in 2014. This is a remarkably small number, cited by a source who had every incentive to inflate it. Clearly the conflict in the Donbas was a civil war, in which Ukrainians were killing other Ukrainians who felt threatened by the ultra-nationalist government in Kyiv.
Finally, it is critical to stress that this was an eight year war right on Russia’s doorstep. It presented an ever-present threat of further escalation and was openly fuelled by the U.S. and NATO via arms sales and military training. Many of the Ukrainian fighters most involved in the Donbas were the neo-nazi battalions, and this was associated with numerous horror stories of human rights abuses being carried out against Ukrainian separatists, Russian-speaking civilians, and pro-Russian / anti-war politicians.
Since the February 24th Russian invasion, Western media reports are trying to suggest that citizens in the Donbas are terrified of Russia’s advance. However, as more cities fall under Russian control, there is a growing number of videos emerging showing grateful Russian-speaking Ukrainians who talk about living in fear under a violent, criminal occupation by Azov and related groups. With three major peace efforts thwarted by Ukrainian neo-nazi extremists, and a stated commitment from Kyiv to crush the Donbas separatists, there is every reason to see this conflict as a cause of Russia’s invasion.
Military and Diplomatic Events Leading up to February 24, 2022
As a final consideration, there are a number of events directly before the Russian invasion that are important precursors to the conflict. Despite being elected on a promise to end the war in the Donbas and bring peace to Ukraine, in early 2021 Zelensky began a crackdown on his political opposition, and particularly on any politicians considered “pro-Russia”. After this, NATO conducted one of its largest military exercises in decades, including approximately 30,000 troops from various countries that maneuvered near the Donbas Republics. In response to this, Russia began building up troops along its border. As tension at the border mounted, Zelensky then made a statement in March of 2021 that “we are taking back Crimea”. This was followed by a further build-up of troops in the southeast of Ukraine. In September of 2021, the United States and Ukraine issued a joint communique supporting Ukraine’s membership in NATO, and affirming its current status as an important NATO partner.
These provocations received an increasingly grim response from the Kremlin, and in December of 2021 Putin sent Washington a list of security guarantees that Russia needed from NATO. These included barring Ukraine from NATO membership and securing its neutrality, and also removing NATO advanced weapons systems from the Eastern European countries they had been placed in. Putin was unequivocal about the perceived threat and provocation by NATO, and of Russia’s precarious situation, stating:
What the United States is doing in Ukraine is at our doorstep. And they should understand that we have nowhere further to retreat to. Under US protection, they are arming and urging on extremists from a neighbouring country at Russia. Against Crimea, for instance. Do they think we’ll just watch idly?
By February of 2022, the Ukrainian military had built up thousands of troops in the southeast, and greatly increased the shelling of Russian speaking Ukrainian rebels in the Donbas. The U.S. ignored Putin’s calls for security guarantees and binding treaties, and later that month, Russia formally acknowledged the Donbas Republics and launched what it calls its “special military operation” intended to protect the Republics and to “de-nazify and demilitarize” Ukraine. Immediately after the invasion began and continuing to this day, the United States and NATO have done everything in their power to flood Ukraine with weapons and to prevent a negotiated peace. They have declared openly that they are engaging in a proxy war with Russia and are trying to drag the conflict out as long as possible in order to “bleed” Russia.
Ending the War
The Western narrative about the conflict in Ukraine would have us believe that an aggressive, war-mongering dictator – Vladimir Putin – invaded Ukraine to occupy and plunder it or to completely destroy it. The motive is either genocidal, or else the kind of cynical “smash-and-grab” capitalism that the United States has made a career of. However, a sober analysis of the facts shows this narrative to be pure speculative fiction. In reality this war is best understood as a geopolitical power struggle between Russia and the United States and it’s NATO allies. The encirclement and constant provocation of the Kremlin by NATO is clear, well-documented, and consistent with the American Empire’s project to destroy Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and any other country that dares chart its own geopolitical course.
The neocons and neoliberal imperialists in Washington have been planning this war and setting its stage for over two decades. In 2014 they used the time-worn strategy of arming and financially supporting extremist elements in order to overthrow an unfriendly government and install a regime compliant with U.S. interests. The tragic victims of this cynical manipulation are the majority of Ukrainians who desire peaceful co-existence among their country’s various ethnicities and between Ukraine and its powerful neighbours. Instead, this dream of peaceful sovereignty has been shattered by a nightmare of war, and while soldiers and innocent civilians die, American arms sellers are ecstatic at the destruction and want to prolong it as long as they can… to fight, as Noam Chomsky has said “to the last Ukrainian”.
As with all times of war, spin, lies, and misinformation are rampant. It is the most elementary of facts that governments, all governments, lie during wartime. However, due to the unique role played by corporate media in North America and Europe, in which otherwise “free” media corporations act as tireless cheerleaders for war, the constant deceit escapes many of us. This is also related to the fact that war is big business, arguably the biggest business, in America today. Again, this elementary truth is rarely mentioned in the mainstream narrative, even though President Eisenhower (himself no dove), warned back in 1956 about the corrupting, democracy-killing power of the “military-industrial complex”. Today 10% of the entire federal budget of the United States, and close to 50% of discretionary spending, flows into the coffers of military contractors – hundreds of billions each year, guaranteed, as long as the war machine remains relevant and the battles continue.
The relationship between war and business interests – in arms sales, but also in securing energy resources and opening foreign markets to corporate control – is an old one. From American history, we should heed the words of General Smedley Butler, once a decorated officer in the U.S. Marines, who wrote an expose on his career called War is a Racket. Butler writes:
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
Butler recalled acting as a “gangster for capitalism”, as he led marine invasions in the Philippines, China, and Central America, usually in support of corporate interests. Over a hundred years later, the same is now true in Ukraine. Former Senator and retired Colonel Richard Black notes that the present conflict is a boon for American military contractors like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grummond and Raytheon. These corporations are the direct beneficiaries of the $40 billion in new military spending that was announced by President Biden in late May. Colonel Black also argues that the profit motive of industry and the strategic motive to weaken Russia are keeping the war from ending, warning:
I don’t think Ukraine has anything to do about the decision for peace or war. I think the decision for peace or war is made in Washington D.C.. As long as we want this war to continue we will continue fighting it with Ukrainian proxies and we will continue it to the last Ukrainian death.
Confronting the real forces driving this war is critical if we are ever to have peace. With this in mind, the purpose of this article has not been to “pick a side” in the current conflict. It has not been to convince anyone that Vladimir Putin is a liberal humanitarian (he’s not), that the current government of Ukraine is a nazi regime (it isn’t), or that every popular uprising around the world is always an act of U.S. imperialism (they aren’t). The purpose has simply been to understand how this particular war started and in so doing, to understand how we can end it.
An end to the war means an immediate halt to the bloodshed. It means a lasting peace in Eastern Europe and a global system that is not carved into hostile, endlessly-warring geopolitical blocs. The single greatest force working against these things is the military-industrial complex of the United States and the politicians it has bought. The sooner we admit this, the sooner we may be able to end the pointless slaughter in Ukraine and the insane courting of nuclear Armageddon.
Citizens of NATO member states like Canada, the U.K. and the United States have an important role to play in working for peace. We need to pressure our governments for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the immediate end of all arms sales to the country. We need a UN-brokered deal that guarantees peace, sovereignty and stability for Ukraine, but also for the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and for Crimea. The right to self-determination of the people in these regions needs to be respected and protected. Despite their voices being completely erased from mainstream media, courageous peace activists in Ukraine are also calling for an end to the conflict and a negotiated peace.
A negotiated peace requires a guarantee of neutrality for Ukraine and the removal of advanced weapons systems from the Eastern European countries that have been gobbled up by NATO since 1997. It also requires an end to the sanctions that have been levelled against Russia and that have largely served to devastate Western economies. Finally, there will need to be new, binding treaties between Russia and NATO that limit offensive and defensive nuclear weapons systems and that once more work toward the elimination of nuclear arsenals. These things are needed first and foremost to move us back from the nuclear brink, to bring some measure of stability back to Europe, and to keep the global economy from spiralling further into inflation and food shortages.
Beyond these immediate goals, we have to undertake the more ambitious and challenging work of dismantling the global war system and redirecting our governments and economies toward humanitarian and ecological ends. This requires building a broad-based, progressive political movement in the West strong enough to force the Pentagon to abandon its insane pursuit of nuclear dominance, and to force the U.S. elite to finally relinquish their failed dreams of global hegemony. We need to divest from the war machine and invest in human rights, health, equality, and dignity. We need to abolish NATO and form a new international architecture that is multi-polar and that allows for global cooperation to solve the existential threats of climate change and ecological collapse. We need the people of Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and China to force our governments to the negotiating table and to wrest our collective future back from the hands of oligarchs and generals alike.
A viable human future on this earth demands that we make these changes – that we dismantle a global system of death and replace it with a system of life. This won’t be an easy task, but we simply cannot afford to fail.
Title image from: https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articles/russia-vs-nato-the-economic-battlefield
