February 2022

By Gary Lefley

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1990, the United States gave a solemn undertaking to Russia that, with the Cold War over, it would not seek to expand NATO membership eastwards. It lied. In the interim period NATO has expanded towards Russia’s borders with 14 new countries, all east of Germany, joining the military alliance. The US wants to continue this development with Ukraine next on the list.

If Ukraine joins NATO, then the US can station nuclear missiles on the Russian border which could strike Moscow within 5 minutes. This development would be disastrous, not just for Russia, but for all of us. If ever there were a technical error or misunderstanding 5 minutes allows precious little time for correction, on either side. A nuclear weapons exchange is likely to destroy half the planet and create a nuclear winter that would render the other half uninhabitable. Needless to say, Russia will never accept Ukraine joining NATO and having US nuclear missiles on its border. The USSR lost 27 million of its people in World War II when it was invaded from the West by Nazi Germany. The scars run deep and the Russian people, from both sides of the Ukraine-Russia border, will not tolerate another existential threat.

PROVOKING RUSSIA

Germany, France, Czech Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey, all NATO members, do not want war with Russia and are reluctant to follow the US line. Even President Zelensky is urging caution. On 28th January he said: “I don’t consider the situation now tenser than before. There is a feeling abroad that there is war here. That’s not the case…”.

The objective of US strategy in Ukraine is to provoke a Russian military incursion, which would provide the perfect excuse to proceed with NATO membership and further militarisation. It would also serve to bring reticent NATO and EU states in behind the US - these states could hardly remain neutral. In addition, it would make it difficult for Germany to proceed with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia, a deal that Biden is keen to scupper, in part to boost US gas sales to Europe. And all of this to be achieved without US ‘boots on the ground’. This is what Biden means by ‘multilateralism’ - its allies stumping up the cash, hardware and dead bodies to project US foreign policy.

It seems that Biden has so far failed to convince the Ukrainian President. Zelensky is aware that a military assault on the Donbass could provoke Russia to intervene militarily, which may be what Biden is after but not what Zelensky wants. The outcome, given that the US and NATO have stated publicly that they would not commit forces to such a conflict, is either a swift defeat for the Ukraine armed forces, or a drawn out civil war with the prospect of tens of thousands of casualties. Zelensky appears unwilling to entertain either outcome. Nevertheless, he leads a far right government that includes Russophobic fascists, who may welcome such a conflict, especially if it can be portrayed as a war against Russia.

For the US that leaves a number of options. It can back off and rethink, which is feasible given Zelensky’s reticence and the disunity within NATO over this issue. Then there are the tried and tested alternatives to be drawn from the CIA and Special Forces playbook. These include ‘false flag’ operations which implicate Russia as the perpetrator of an act of war, or some other heinous act. In any eventuality, without effective global and domestic opposition, the US is unlikely to abandon its strategy for the continuing expansion of NATO eastwards and the encirclement, containment, and isolation of Russia. It can then focus its attention on China and Taiwan. In this regard, the recent joint China-Russia statement calling for an end to NATO expansion is significant.

BEST HOPE FOR PEACE

The best hope for peace reside with the 2015 Minsk 2 Agreement between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France, and the Russian proposal for Donetsk and Luhansk to have the status of autonomous regions within a united Ukraine. Right now, the priority is to bring pressure to bear on the US and NATO to take a step back and to negotiate, based on Minsk 2. At some point sooner rather than later, the US has to accept, or be made to accept, that security is mutual and reciprocal. The alternative is war, with cataclysmic outcomes. Longer term peace requires the dissolution of NATO, an alliance whose proclaimed purpose ended with the break-up of the Warsaw Pact. Though in fact the Pact (1955) came into being as a response to NATO’s formation (1949).

In the interim the US needs to honour the guarantees it made in the 1990s, which allow for a buffer zone between NATO and Russia. As an immediate minimum, NATO must reverse its avowed policy of expanding into Ukraine and Georgia, with legally binding undertakings to that effect. Mutual security requires that the US and Russia guarantee not to station missiles or other military forces beyond current positions, as agreed by Kennedy and Khrushchev in the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban-Turkey missile crisis.

The preparedness of the US to engage in brinkmanship with the world’s second most powerful nuclear state is perhaps indicative of its relative decline as the world’s preeminent economic power and the beginning of the end of the United States unipolar world order. Unfortunately this makes the world even more dangerous. We are entering a critical period where US militarism may be used increasingly to prop up its weakening economic and imperial domination. 

 

Leaders at Minsk 2 talks 2015. Left to right: Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus, Vladimir Putin, Russia, Anfela Merkel, Germany, Francois Hollande, France, Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine. Photo by Russian Press Office

The preparedness of the US to engage in brinkmanship with the world’s second most powerful nuclear state is perhaps indicative of its relative decline as the world’s preeminent economic power and the beginning of the end of the United States unipolar world order.