My time is now divided between caring for Susie as she heals and watching, mesmerized, the efforts by the Ukrainian people to resist the Russian invasion. Putin is a despicable thug and I hope this effort is his downfall. The Russian army I believe is a conscript army, not a volunteer army, and I continue to wonder what effect it will have upon them to be ordered into what must for many of them be in effect a family feud.
I am afraid I do not have any profound observations, just concern.
> Putin is a despicable thug
ReplyDeleteFor a philosopher, you are way too focused on a personality...
What Is the Difference Between Kosovo & Donbass?
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/23/what-is-the-difference-between-kosovo-donbass/
Dear Islander,
ReplyDeleteinform yourself about the difference. You will be surprised how clear it is. Of course, I don't know which island you live on and how far it is from the mainland, but the scale for assessing the initial situation should be clear in any case.
One wonders about a leader who would put his nation's nuclear forces on a "special regime of duty" in response to economic sanctions.
ReplyDeleteI wish to acknowledge an error I made in a comment on a prior post. In that comment I referred to Ukraine as “the Ukraine” and another commenter (I believe it was Eric) challenged my usage of that term. I defended the usage by referring to a dictionary entry which appeared to validate the use of the article “the.”
ReplyDeleteToday I learned that the using the definite article in front of “Ukraine” is the terminology preferred by Russia, because it implies that Ukraine is not an independent country, but still a province belonging to Russia. Ukrainians themselves do not use the definite article. So, I stand corrected, and the article should be deleted to show solidarity with Ukraine.
For those who watched SNL last night, it was inspiring and poignant to see and hear the Ukranian chorus of New York singing at the beginning of the show. (Since I do not speak Ukranian, I do not know what they were singing, but I assumed it was the Ukranian National Anthem. Does anyone reading the blog know what they were singing?)
> Dear Islander, [...] I don't know which island you live on
ReplyDeleteA prominent downside of free speech is that one has to contend with such moronically childish responses...
For those with brains, here is the latest from Greenwald on how the propaganda machine is working in overdrive: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/war-propaganda-about-ukraine-becoming
I just watched an interview with Andrei Kozyrev, the former Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin, on ABC News. He currently lives in Miami. He personally knows all of the Russian players involved in the current crisis, including Putin and Lavrov. He stated that Lavrov has changed, and that if they were together today, he would not turn his back on Lavrov, fearing he would be stabbed in the back. He also asserted that the U.S. had mistakenly appeased (his words) Russia when it failed to impose sanctions when Russia annexed Crimea. He described how when he and Putin were growing up together, they ran with street gangs. When the leader of a gang made a miscalculation, it was a common tactic to pretend to be going mad, demanding that the other gang members hold him back from doing something outrageous. That is what he believes Putin is doing by threatening nuclear retaliation for the sanctions. He stated that Putin has made two miscalculations – he underestimated the willingness of the Ukranian people to resist, and the ability of the West to unify against him. Finally, he said that if Putin in fact takes steps to launch a nuclear strike, he will meet strong resistance from the military leaders whom he needs to actually launch the missiles. I certainly hope he is correct about that.
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. did impose sanctions after the annexation of Crimea, so I guess Kozyrev must have meant to say "not strong enough sanctions."
ReplyDelete> Greenwald is a far left flunky and an idiot
ReplyDeleteAs expected, another ad hominem in response to a well argued article full of examples... Intellectual impotence at full display.
Excellent take by Greenwald.
ReplyDeleteIslander,
ReplyDeleteWhen two individuals exchange ad hominem remarks, by what metric does one decide whose ad hominem remark is valid, and the other invalid?
> by what metric
ReplyDeleteBy one's ability to stop spewing ad hominem and argue the merits. Because the owner, as typical of him in political matters, has consented that he "do[es] not have any profound observations", I've shared Golstein's and Greewald's to augment and enhance the most recent profound and historically informed take by Mearsheimer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbj1AR_aAcE) that I believe was mentioned in a discussion a day or two before...
"Greenwald is a far left flunky and an idiot with absolutely no comprehension of world affairs."
ReplyDeleteLet me help: "Greenwald is an idiot with absolutely no comprehension of world affairs." There that's better. Greenwald is a regular on various right-wing propaganda venues and is a member of the Substack IDW moron brigade. "Left" NSM, just a stuck record.
Also, the sanctions mean the cheques for the folks at the bottom of the Russian propaganda network are the first to stop. Just saying.
I noticed from the time (that I will never get back) I spent listening to GG that he has adopted the same faux "I am a truth-telling, straight shooting, in the know, person you can trust" that O' Reilly and Carlson use when conning their listeners.
On another note (sort of), how about those dueling fascist and fascist-lite meetings in Orlando? Welcome to the 1930s.
Glenn Greenwald publishes information that does not appear in the mainstream media. That is very valuable.
ReplyDeleteDoes he made mistakes? For sure.
Is he a divo/diva? Yes, at times.
Does he use some tricks that Tucker Carlson does? Probably. I don't listen to Tucker Carlson, I don't even have a TV set. Tucker Carlson wears socks, I bet and I do too.
When the mainstream media starts covering the stories that Greenwald does, he'll be out of business.
He's won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Snowden case and in Brazil his reporting was instrumental in freeing Lula Da Silva, ex leftist president, unjustly jailed by a judge who turned out to be a follower of ultra-rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro. So at times at least Greenwald hits the right target.
aaall, I appreciate your point, that a claim to quasi-omniscience is ussually a tacit admission of prejudice. But should that be so, shouldn't you yourself be a little bit more cautious in your categorization of others? I don't mean this in an ad hominem sort of way--we have enough of that on this site. But maybe you could phrase your criticisms in ways that indicate you might be a bit off the mark in your specific opinion?
ReplyDeleteFor those with the time to read it, there’s an interesting essay on Russia’s engagement with a neighbor which reveals just how inappropriate it is to try to label the views of outsiders as left or right, as pro- or anti-Putin, etc.
ReplyDeletehttps://newleftreview.org/issues/ii30/articles/tony-wood-the-case-for-chechnya
Such case make for strange bedfellows.
aaall,
ReplyDeleteAre you referring to the anti-Semitic rallies in Orlando, Florida?
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/01/31/local-state-leaders-condemn-anti-semitic-behavior-from-demonstrators-in-orange-county/
I just learned about it based on your reference. Although some have criticized DeSantis for not condemning the protests quickly enough, according to the article the mayor and chief of police of Orlando condemned them immediately.
This is better than what the mayor and City Council of Ann Arbor have done, where it took them 18 years to pass a resolution condemning protests which have been occurring every Saturday morning, for 18 years, in front of a synagogue in Ann Arbor. The protesters have been placing 15-20 signs every Saturday morning in front of the synagogue which carry such messages as “Resist Jewish Power”; “Jewish Power Corrupts”; “No More Holocaust Movies”; “Zionists are Nazis”; and “Israel Attached America 9/11/2001.” Members of the congregation, and their children, are forced to see these signs – and have been forced to see the sigs every Saturday morning for 18 years - as they enter the synagogue to worship.
In a lawsuit I filed on behalf of two of the synagogue’s congregants seeking an injunction which placed reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on their conduct – the same type of injunctions which have been entered against pro-life picketers in front of abortion clinics – the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the protests are absolutely protected by the 1st Amendment and that no injunction of any kind could be entered to restrict it. I disagree and maintain that hate speech in proximity to any house of worship, whether it is a Protestant or Catholic church; a mosque; a Hindu or Sikh temple; or a predominantly African-American church, is subject to reasonable injunctive relief. For example, the Ku Klux Klan may not place signs of in front of a predominantly African-American church with signs using the N – word and claiming that African-American mothers give birth to crack babies. I have acknowledges that the use of hate speech in other contexts, anywhere else in Ann Arbor or the United States, is protected by the 1st Amendment. It is not protected when used in proximity to a house of worship to harass and insult the congregants as they enter their house of worship, regardless the religion.
I currently have a petition for a writ of certiorari pending before the Supreme Court, requesting that the Court revere the decision of the 6th Circuit. I am optimistic that the petition will be granted.
I type too fast.
ReplyDelete"Reverse," not "revere."
I checked, just in case. I did not use the word "revere" in the petition.
aaall,
ReplyDeleteOK, now I know what you were referring to.
I just watched the 6:30 P.M. news and they reported on the Republican convention in Orlando, highlighting the frontrunners for the 2014 Republican nomination for President. Il Duce, chief fascist of the Republican Party, was given a standing ovation.
Oh well, now you know about the flourishing anti-Semitism in Ann Arbor.
Another errror
ReplyDelete2024
In one of those fascinating ironies of history, the Ukrainians are making effective use of Molotov cocktails, homemade fire grenades which were invented by the Finns during the Winter War of 1939. The cocktail is named after the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who had masterminded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the non-aggression agreement between Germany and Russia whereby they agreed to divide Poland between them. Germany proceeded to violate the pact by invading Russia in 1941. After the pact was signed, Russia launched the Winter War on Finland, dropping bombs on Finnish cities, which Molotov claimed were actually food baskets being dropped by the Russians to relieve starvation among the Finns. The Finns in turn invented the Molotov cocktail, naming it in his honor. So, Putin’s lies about the invasion of Ukraine being motivated by the atrocities being committed against Russians in Ukraine by neo-Nazis is part of the tradition of lying in order to justify aggression. It is only fitting that the Ukrainians are fighting back with homemade Molotov cocktails.
ReplyDeleteSetting aside, for the moment, the specifics of the current military operation in Ukraine, can an anarchist explain how a group of anarchists would be able to defend themselves in the face of an incursion from a nonanarchist neighbor who wanted to take their territory or wanted to change their policies?
ReplyDeleteJust heard the Russian central Bank raised a key interest rate to just north of 20%. That seems problematic. Belarus may enter the war on Russia's side and the EU is financing military aid to Ukraine. EUCOM is at DEFCON 2. It's not even August yet.
ReplyDeleteThere is, of course, no definite article in either Russian or Ukrainian, so the supposed usage of Russians or Ukrainians with regard to whether to add the definite article in front of the word 'Ukraine' or not actually refers to the practice of these often non-native speakers of English when talking about Ukraine in English.
ReplyDeleteI personally prefer not to use the article but I would demur at anyone suggesting that I am signalling anything political if I do say 'The Ukraine' just because there is a claim somewhere that the distinction between using the definite article or not does signal a political division, which in any case I may not recognise or accept myself. Here in the UK The Guardian doesn't use the article and the BBC sometimes does, and it would be absurd to state that the latter is following any Russian line on the matter.
As with many other aspects of language, such usage is partly due to common practice and it's not always logical - there's plenty of country names for which English usually prefers the definite article, and it's not always clear why that is the case (The Netherlands, The Bahamas, The Congo in the past, etc.). And in other languages this is not even a choice - Italian MUST have definite articles before ANY country name - La Spagna, L'Italia (with the article elided before a vowel), L'Ucraina, etc. - whether anyone likes it or not.
DJL,
ReplyDeleteThank you for that interesting linguistic clarification. Your use of the phrase “of course,” however, gives the readers too much credit. I suspect that most people who are not Ukrainian have no idea that there is no definite article in the Ukrainian language. Is this also true of Russian? Which other languages?
Re: the Greenwald article. He spends the entirety of it (and it goes on and on) basically urging a distinction between morality and prudence — he’s not trying to change anyone’s moral assessment of the situation, he says, he’s only urging that we not let jingoistic feelings cloud our judgment about deescalating the conflict.
ReplyDeleteHow very convenient. In the past, Greenwald has justified his steadfast refusal to criticize Putin on the grounds that he’s not in the business of attacking leaders half a world away, from countries of which he is not a citizen (a principle he borrows from Chomsky). Yet surely, if ever there was a time to utter even the mildest reproach of Putin, it is THIS moment. Putin has launched a war of aggression against a sovereign nation in clear violation of international law, not to mention basic morality. Millions are suffering at this moment, and thousands will die. Putin owns this catastrophe. Greenwald, a smart man with legal training, surely knows this. Yet now he is claiming to rise loftily above a focus on the mere moral dimension of the crisis — which, it just so happens, will spare him from having to utter an obvious but unsavory truth about his boy Vladimir. Again, how convenient.
We can see how Greenwald’s Putin sympathies warp his perceptions when we look to his citation of the study showing some 85 percent disapproval of Russia among Americans. Greenwald insinuates that these numbers are due to the relentless, deafening onslaught of jingoistic propaganda — when really disapproval is exactly what people should be feeling at this moment. By analogy, I doubt that when world opinion was overwhelmingly against the U.S. and Bush in 2003, Greenwald was going around attributing those numbers to anti-American propaganda.
When you start to feel badgered by the expression of clear moral principles, maybe it’s time to reevaluate your life.
aaall
ReplyDeleteI don't think it will ever be August, if by August you meant August 1914. But I've been wrong before, quite recently in fact, and I could be wrong again.
P.s. French also has the definite article before names of countries, iirc.
Or perhaps you were referring to a phase of the Cuban missile crisis.
ReplyDeleteIn his book “Conventional Deterrence” (1983), Prof. Mearsheimer analyzed the conditions under which deterrence aimed at aggression by an adversary is likely, and unlikely, to succeed. He contended that the success of deterrence is determined by the character of the adversary’s military strategy and objectives, which he broke down into three categories: war of attrition; war of limited aims; blitzkrieg. He concluded that deterrence has its highest potential for success if the adversary engages in either of the first two strategies, and the lowest likelihood of success in the case of the third strategy, blitzkrieg – rapid, overwhelming invasion which prevents the defender from mounting an effective defense. His analysis may be proving accurate with regard to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While Russia may have intended its invasion of Ukraine to be a blitzkrieg, it has been stalled by the resistance of the Ukrainian army and its people. The longer the invasion is stalled, the more likely Western deterrence measures will take their toll and force Russian to reconsider its objective.
ReplyDeleteI might be wrong about this, but I doubt the analysis in that book is very relevant here.
ReplyDeleteDeterrence means preventing an adversary from doing something. Russia has already invaded Ukraine, so in that sense deterrence has failed.
You may be right that the longer the Russian advance stalls, the more impact the Western economic sanctions will have. But the sanctions measures are more designed to punish, I think, than to get Putin to reconsider his objectives, the *precise* nature of which is still somewhat unclear, w.r.t. Ukraine etc.
Putting more NATO forces in the so-called eastern flank is, partly, a deterrence measure, bc it's aimed partly at preventing a Russian attack on a NATO country.
But the sanctions aren't deterrence measures, they're sanctions.
Deterrence is about preventing an "actor" from doing something it hasn't done yet, that's just what it means. This may seem like hair splitting and pedantic terminological fussing, but I don't think it is. What words and concepts mean matters here, just as it does in your field of the law.
LFC,
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, you are playing on semantics and splitting hairs. In the context in which Prof. Mearsheimer was writing, it is obvious that he was not discussing the pragmatism of deterrence in the context only of pre-aggression conduct. This is so because a military strategist could not predict in advance which of the three modes of aggression - war of attrition; war of limited aims; or blitzkrieg – the aggressor would be using. Clearly, an aggressor would not forecast its intentions in advance, particularly if it were planning a blitzkrieg attack. Mearsheimer was referring to ex post facto implementation of deterrence measures.
And the notion that the term “deterrence,” by definition, can only apply to pre-aggression conduct is false. Deterrence can also refer to actions which are intended to deter an aggressor from continuing in implementing its aggressive action even after they have begun. So, I agree that how one uses words, and that one should use words accurately, is important, both when dealing with international relations, as well as in law. And I would recommend that you use them more accurately.
A note on the article: my paternal grandparents were Ukrainian, both born there and with both their families emigrating to the U.S. in the 1910s. I never knew my grandfather, but knew my grandmother well. She, my father, and so I always referred to it as 'The Ukraine'.
ReplyDeleteIslander,
ReplyDeleteNow I realize it was you that had cited the Goldstein article before. The article implies that ethnic Russians were being persecuted in Ukraine systematically. Where is the evidence? hopefully you won't mention the language law controversy, or the actions of the fascist thugs?.
Glenn Greenwald is not an idiot, but he is a big diva as S.Wallerstein said. He likes fame and attention to the point of clouding his judgement. I think the last 3 years demonstrate this. Nevertheless, the article you cited does have some value, but I doubt that the concerns he cites affect the people regularly commenting in this blog. Frankly I thought that this quote should be read again by you:
"None of this means the views you may have formed about the war in Ukraine are right or wrong. It is of course possible that the Western consensus is the overwhelmingly accurate one and that the moral framework that has been embraced is the correct prism for understanding this conflict. All sides in war wield propaganda, and that certainly includes the Russians and their allies as well. This article is not intended to urge the adoption of one viewpoint or the other"
The ideas that Putin is a thug that is creating unnecessary loss of lives and that there is strong uniformity in the coverage of the events in the Western media and that US has some historical fault for the crisis are not mutually exclusive.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate legal side note, this morning I was researching the source of the legal maxim, “Justice delayed is justice denied,” because I am dealing with a case in which the state court judge has failed to rule for nine months on a motion I defended against back in May, 2021. My research disclosed this interesting literary connection. In Bleak House, Dickens wrote about the case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, which was going on so interminably that “the little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world.” It is base on the actual case of Jennens v. Jennens, which involved a dispute over the estate of William Jennens who died in 1798, at that time the wealthiest person in Britain (he made his living lending money to gamblers). The lawsuit commenced the year of his death, because he died without a will. The lawsuit was abandoned in 1915, because the legal fees had exhausted Jennens’ estate, which had been worth £2 million at the time of his death.
ReplyDeleteMarco,
ReplyDeleteThey may not be mutually exclusive from a logical standpoint, but they may be mutually exclusive from a factual standpoint, and I, and many others, believe that they are, and to say that they are not is just a pretext for gratuitously bashing the U.S.
On "Ukraine" vs "The Ukraine/the Ukraine":
ReplyDeleteI have been reading the memoirs of James Baker, George H. W. Bush & Brent Scowcroft, Bill Clinton, Strobe Talbott, Madeleine Albright, George W. Bush, and Condoleezza Rice. (All published after 1994.) None of them use the term "the Ukraine"; they all use just "Ukraine."
I lived in the 90s & 00s in NYC, where I met several Ukrainians. None of them used the term "the Ukraine," as far as I recall. (I also met and worked with many Russians, including many immigrant Russian Jews.)
Just glancing at NYT style from 1989 vs 1994, it looks the Times dropped the definite article after Ukraine became an independent state.
If you are interested, you might take a look at a Google n-grams plot comparing the two terms. If this link doesn't work, you can run a plot yourself.
AA
ReplyDeleteI just searched on "mearsheimer conventional deterrence reviews" and what came up at or near the top was a short review (more like a short summary) by Andrew Pierre in the Winter 1983/4 issue of Foreign Affairs. (Am on phone so can't link to it easily but later will do so.) This little review strongly suggests to me that your understanding of what Mearsheimer is doing in that book is not right.
I admire your intellectual curiosity etc. but there are hazards when one glances at a book quickly and assumes they've gotten an understanding of what an author is doing. To be clear, I haven't read the book either. But that little review refers to the *capacity* to launch a blitzkrieg, it doesn't refer to one that's already been launched. (Will come back later and provide the text of the review.)
No surprise Ukrainians and Russians wouldn't use the definite article before the word 'Ukraine' - or in general, as very often these second-language speakers of English use very few such articles, for the reason I mentioned earlier: neither Russian nor Ukrainian have definite article. As a case in point, I see some of my contacts on Linkedin who are from those regions writing long messages on the boards where you run into things like 'help defeat Russian army and support Ukrainian army', where the most idiomatic expressions would include the definite article before Russian and Ukrainian, and in such cases (noun phrases headed by an adjective) there is no such confusion between an independent and a non-independent nation state (in other words, the reasons are linguistic).
ReplyDeleteThe NYT case is a curious one, if that's really what happened; I know that in the UK at one point the Ukrainian ambassador made the point that has been noted here (including the claim that the sentences were ungrammatical if the article was included, which is not the case), and that had an effect on mainstream media usage - but the distinction is not codified in the English language per se (and the respective ambassador to Italy would have a hard time pulling that off).
AA,
ReplyDeleteI was responding to Islander who appears to be attacking conventional wisdom on Putin and his policies by attacking the uniformity of the western press and also comparing
Kosovo with Donbass. I find that line of argument dangerous.
However, I do think that the US bears some responsibility for the crisis that ultimately led to the invasion. This historical responsibility of American foreign policy in eastern Europe starts after the end of the Cold War.
It appears some use this assessment and exaggerate it to ignore and sometimes to wash away Russia's sins. That is what I find dangerous.
Now maybe I am misinterpreting you, but are you affirming that the US has no (historic) responsibility for the decades long crisis?
LFC,
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you once again. I found the truncated review you are referring to. (I have no intention of subscribing to Foreign Affairs in order to obtain the complete review.) But even the limited review which is available, it contradicts your claim, because it asserts” “It [Conventional Deterrence] is about deterrence by denial, rather than by retaliation and associated problems of threat credibility, and is applied to central Europe under the assumption that both sides have mobilized their forces.” The reference to “mobilized forces” entails past conduct, not anticipated future conduct. Moreover, the distinction between “deterrence by denial” vs. “by retaliation” clearly refers to events which have already occurred, because the term “retaliation” can only relate to actions which have already been taken.
In any case, even assuming you are correct, your logic is inapplicable. We know that the current Russian invasion is not a blitzkrieg, even if Russia intended its invasion to be a blitzkrieg. The blitzkrieg has bogged down and has stalled. Under these circumstances, Mearsheimer’s observations regarding deterrence of the other two classifications which Mearsheimer discusses - war of attrition and war of limited aims – would still apply. In this context, deterrence by denial, rather than by retaliation, would still be relevant. And the U.S. and its European allies have, in point of fact, imposed sanctions which constitute deterrence by denial – refusing Russian planes the use of air space over Europe; freezing Russian bank accounts; kicking Russia out of the SWIFT banking system, are all acts of denial, rather than military retaliation. This is consistent with a meaning of the word “deterrence” which includes conduct intended to impede continuation of an invasion after it has started, not just deterrence of the commencement of an invasion.
Marco,
ReplyDeleteTo answer your last question, Yes. The argument that the U.S. bears some responsibility for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is based on a claim that the United States breached verbal promises which Presidents Bush and Clinton purportedly made to Russia upon the break-up of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand by offering or accepting former members of the Soviet bloc into NATO. First, verbal promises are not enforceable even in law unless there is evidence of reciprocal detrimental reliance, and are not worth the paper they are written on. What was Russia’s detrimental reliance on the supposed promises? Did the Soviet Union not prevent its break-up based on the alleged promises? How could it have stopped it? Gorbachev wanted the break-up for many reasons, one of which was that it had become financially infeasible for the Soviet Union to continue to assert control over the numerous Soviet republics. Dose anyone think that if the U.S. and its European allies had not promised, verbally, to increase the membership of NATO that the break-up of the Soviet Union would not have occurred?
Second, compare the conduct of the U.S. and Europe with regard to the alleged breach of their verbal promises to not expand NATO to Russia’s actual breaches of written agreements and protocols. Take, for example, the Budapest Protocol which I referred to a comment on the prior post. In the Budapest Protocol, Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine’s surrender of the nuclear weapons which the Soviet Union had lodged in Ukraine. Breaching a written, signed document is far worse, both legally and morally, than breaching a purported verbal promise.
Finally, Russia’s claim that the expansion of NATO threatened Russia’s security and sovereignty is a ruse. Putin knows that NATO would not offensively invade Russia. NATO was needed in order to resist then Soviet, and now Russian, aggression against its former satellite states. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is proof positive that the need for NATO, including its newest members, is indeed needed in order to defend against Russian aggression.
Correction:
ReplyDeleteDose anyone think that if the U.S. and its European allies had not promised, verbally, to not increase the membership of NATO that the break-up of the Soviet Union would not have occurred?
The argument that the U.S. bears some responsibility for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is NOT based on a claim that the United States breached verbal promises which presidents Bush and Clinton made to Russia . . .
ReplyDeleteAt best, that is part of the claim. The larger, more relevant claim is that the United States has pursued a quite forceful, expansionary foreign policy following the collapse of the USSR when, as the sole remaining superpower, a significant faction of its foreign policy-making and implementing elite imagined they could radically re-shape the world more in their long-term favor. It is in light of such US doctrines as “full spectrum dominance” and armed interventions in numerous places—including, by the way, Kosovo, which so many tend to overlook when they talk about bombing campaigns in post-Cold War Europe, and NATO’s out of theater attack on Afghanistan—resulting in regime changes, that Russia’s apprehensions regarding how NATO will be employed in the future seem LESS THAN A RUSE and more of a reasonably well-founded anxiety. Indeed, the US’s fingerprints were all over the regime change in Ukraine itself in 2014, just as previously they were all over Yeltsin's re-election in Russia in 1996 (an election which Clinton hailed as "a triumph of democracy.")
One need not be a supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to recognize that it does have legitimate grievances—grievances which the US has either ignored or else tried to trivialise. Had they been treated seriously by those in a position to do so, the horrors in Ukraine today might have been avoided.
Addenda:
1. On the Yeltsin re-election campaign, there's an interesting account by Daniel Singer, "Russia's miracle at the polls." The long American intervention in Russia after the collapse of the USSR is widely regarded as having been disastrous for the Russian people and as a reaction helped Putin come to power and impose the type of regime he now leads.
2.For an interesting if a bit beside the point discussion of the subject see Johan Lau Munkholm, “The pursuit of full spectrum dominance: The archives of the NSA,” in Surveillance & Society vol. 18 (2), 244-256 (2020). The article “is an exploration of a fantasy of prediction held within the US security apparatus that manifests itself in a belief in the ability of big data to procure military dominance on a scale that moves beyond the present and into the future.” Note the term "military dominance." The approach Munkholm is analysing is, in my words, not the author’s, one more example of Artificial Stupidity purporting to be Artificial Intelligence.
Prof. Wilson,
ReplyDeleteI am going to have to bow out this discussion for now, since I have two briefs which are due by Friday, one in federal court, the other in state court, and the more time I spend on the issues on this blog I am risking jeopardizing my clients’ rights. I will leave to other commenters to respond to your analysis,if they wish. In closing, however, I wish to contest how NATO’s “out of theater attack on Afghanistan” could have provided any legitimate basis for Russia to be suspicious of the U.S.’s and NATO’s long-term objectives vis a’ vis Russia. The attack and invasion of Afghanistan arose out of the attacks on the Twin Towers in Manhattan and on the Pentagon by terrorists being harbored by the Afghan government. (I, of course, expect push-back on this claim by s. wallerstein and the cadre of usual suspects.) Europe had legitimate concerns that such terrorist attacks could expand into terrorist attacks by Al Queda in Europe. So NATO’s assistance in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was not without legitimate concerns about European security, and presented absolutely no threat to the future security of Russia.
AA, Belarus had neutrality and a non-nuclear status written in its constitution. How has that worked out? Oh, and Switzerland has decided not to be neutral in this.
ReplyDeleteI still believe that something is really wrong with Putin - mentally, physically or both. The optics of toasting at 20' and the distanced table length meetings are so terrible that there has to be a good reason. These seem the actions of a man running out of time.
LFC, probably not but... When Chernobyl happened I recall reading that some sheep got dosed in Wales 2,000 miles away (been to several Asian nations, never been to Europe, never contemplated how close things were). Russian nukes are coming to Belarus. Russian doctrine allows for the use of tactical nukes. While a fallout-free detonation of a small tactical nuke is possible, screw-ups are also possible.
Of course, backing down after such an escalation would be a classic case of rewarding bad behavior and set an example for other bad actors. Nothing good will follow regardless.
There is a simple solution if only certain folks in Russia would recall how Khrushchev and Zhukov dealt with the problem of Beria. One of the disadvantages of being an autocrat is moving on while still moving.
Ed Barreras: "LFC, perhaps you (or someone else) can enlighten people like me — who weren’t cognizant of politics in the 90s — as to what was the rationale for NATO offered then? And what in your opinion was the *real* rationale, if it differed from the offered one? Was NATO expansion after 1989 meant merely to send a message to Russia (still the region’s sole nuclear power): Get in line behind the neoliberal order, or else?"
ReplyDeleteSec of State Warrren Christopher (Clinton 1st term):
"While [NATO] was formed to serve primarily as a military alliance, over the years it demonstrated almost equivalent value as an instrument for facilitating the spread of democracy and democratic institutions throughout Europe. By including Italy, the only defeated Axis nation among NATO's twelve original members, the alliance accelerated the democratization of that country. Similarly, the addition of Greece and Turkey in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982 produced dramatic corollary benefits....
... While the Communist threat had abated, [I was among those who] believed new threats—terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, genocidal violence, and instability within and between states—could and should be addressed by NATO....
I also believed that an expansion of NATO to include the fledgling democracies of Central and Eastern Europe would help to promote European integration and unification. By focusing the attention of these former Soviet satellites and republics to join NATO, I felt that we could channel their energies toward productive goals, such as strengthening democratic and legal institutions, ensuring civilian command of the armed forces, and attending to human rights. Moreover ... we could tilt them toward peaceful settlement of disputes with their neighbors.
... I reasoned that if we did not enlarge the alliance, we would permanently endorse the dividing line that Stalin had drawn across Europe in 1945....
... [President Clinton] was insistent that our goal must be to integrate and unify Europe.... By extending eastward the successful institutions of Western Europe, he felt we could help bring security and prosperity to the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.... [T]he European Community, in his view, was moving too slowly ... but we had little power to accelerate the EC process. In NATO, however, the Unites States held a much stronger hand. This was the vehicle, he believed, to hasten European integration."
Sec of State Madeleine Albright (Clinton 2nd term):
"I felt we should welcome [the nations of Central and East Europe into NATO], because if they were denied NATO protection, they would be in political limbo and might well seek security through other means, resulting in uppredictable alliances, efforts at rearmament, and the possible use of force to settle disputes."
When Yeltsin warned Albright that expansion of NATO would lead to a redivision of Europe into two camps, she replied (she says): "Mr President, if as you say there is a new Russia, there is also a new NATO, not one of we versus you or you versus us, but one where we are on the same side.'"
Also Albright:
"Our plan was to develop a NATO-Russia charter that would give Moscow a voice but not a veto in European security discussions.
...
Part of our strategy, our course, was to convince the Russians that enlargement would go forward with or without their agreement.
... the Russians pressed for limits on what would be permissible on the territory of new allies. We refused to negotiate on that basis but said we had 'no need, no plan, and no intention' of deploying nuclear weapons or substantial new forces to the East....
Eventually we wore the Russians down...."
(cont from 3:26pm)
ReplyDeleteDomestically in the US, the Pentagon and most of the wider foreign-policy establishment (eg George Kennan) were very much opposed to NATO enlargement when Clinton came into office. An informal CFR poll reportedly showed two-to-one opposition, per Albright.
Pushed by Clinton, the Department of Defense came up with an idea for a "Partnership for Peace," championed by John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. The Partnership would supposedly be a forum that would bring together NATO and former Warsaw-Pact countries, including Russia, for joint planning, exercises, and peace-keeping missions, but without the NATO article 5 guarantee of collective defense against military attacks on any NATO member and without giving Russia the veto power it held in the UN.
And as his administration progressed, Clinton also faced pressure to expand NATO from many on the right. His response to the devastation the Democrats experienced in the 1994 midterm elections was to try to triangulate; and Newt Gingrich, the new Republican Speaker of the House, had written expansion of NATO into his Contract With America plan.
AA, I am, as you will appreciate, quite familiar with the events of 9/11 and its consequences. NATO’s involvement there could be interpreted as a sign that that organization was no longer bound by the limits that supposedly defined its range of operations. The problem, as so often in politics, is to try to see ourselves as others see us—not necessarily to agree, but to understand, for that’s what bargains and agreements are based on, I think. Since I imagine I belong among your “usual suspects,” you may interpret this as a bit of push-back on your version of the attacks of 9/11.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, best wishes in your legal ventures. I was, by the way, duly horrified by your account of those antisemitic demonstrations.
And let's not forget (or perhaps many here don't even know this) that President Clinton helped Yeltsin defeat a Communist challenger backed by Putin in the 1996 election, so Yeltsin in many ways owed his second term to Clinton. As Alan Gilman tells it in WSWS:
ReplyDelete"In 1996, the White House and President Bill Clinton personally mounted a massive campaign to secure the reelection of Boris Yeltsin, whose comprador regime had been installed in the first place to oversee the dissolution of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism....
By the time Yeltsin announced in early 1996 that he would be running for a second term in the presidential election scheduled for that summer, he had become one of the most despised figures in Russia, having presided over the catastrophic consequences of the privatization of the Russian economy. The impact included a GDP decline of 50 percent, hyperinflation, rampant corruption, skyrocketing violent crime, the collapse of medical services, food and fuel shortages, nonpayment of wages and pensions, and a plunge in life expectancy. Added to this toxic mix was Yeltsin’s highly unpopular war with Chechnya.
By late 1993, these policies had provoked such massive opposition that Yeltsin, by means of a dictatorial decree, dissolved the parliament. In response, opponents in Moscow took over government buildings. To put down the rebellion, Yeltsin, using critical intelligence provided by Washington, called out the military, shelled the parliament building and in the ensuing bombing and shooting killed an estimated 2,000 people...."
Three Americans—two Republical political operatives and Richard Dresner, an associate of Dick Morris, Clinton's chief political advisor; Dresner had helped Clinton get elected governor of Alabama—went to Moscow claiming to be there to sell thin-screen tv's in Russia. They worked for four months with an unlimited budget for campaign polling and other research.
Dick Morris reportedly later said: "When I worked for Clinton, Clinton called me and said, ‘I want to get Yeltsin elected as president of Russia against Gennady Zyuganov,’ who was the communist who was running against him. Putin was Zyuganov’s major backer. It became public that Clinton would meet with me every week. We would review the polling that was being done for Yeltsin by a colleague of mine, who was sending it to me every week. He, Clinton and I would go through it and Bill would pick up the hotline and talk to Yeltsin and tell him what commercials to run, where to campaign, what positions to take. He basically became Yeltsin’s political consultant."
Gilman in WSWS again:
ReplyDelete"Many believe that despite the pervasive interference by the US in the 1996 election, it still was not enough to elect Yeltsin, and that he actually lost. They view the result as an outright fraud, supported by the US.
Comments purportedly made in February 2012 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev lend credence to this view. A Time article dated February 24, 2012 indicated that during a meeting with leaders of opposition parties who were complaining about recent election fraud, Medvedev said that Yeltsin was not the winner of the 1996 election."
Not Alabama, Eric. Arkansas.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, yes, of course. lol
ReplyDeleteEric,
ReplyDeleteThanks. The research you've done has been quite enlightening.
I quoted from Kwame Nkrumah "Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism" here on 16 Feb, I think.
ReplyDeleteRecall three key points of Nkrumah's analysis:
(1) The neo-colonial state is controlled by the imperial power through "the imposition of a banking system [and I would add, debts] controlled by the imperial power."
(2) "[Neo-colonialism] is based upon the principle of breaking up former large united colonial territories into a number of small non-viable States which are incapable of independent development and must rely upon the former imperial power for defense and even internal security."
(3) "If the social conditions occasioned by neo-colonialism cause a revolt the local neo-colonialist government can be sacrificed and another equally subservient one substituted in its place."
US policymakers coat everything in flowery language about democratic institutions and human rights, but when you boil it all down, they have basically admitted that a large part of their strategy in neutering what is now the former Soviet Union was to help break up a large, powerful adversary into a bunch of small countries dependent on the West (and the US especially) for defense and financial support, bringing them into a military alliance over which Russia has little direct influence (unlike in the UN, where Russia holds veto power in the Security Council).
In Ukraine, when a government that leaned toward greater integration with Russia was democratically elected, the US was more than happy to support the movement that pushed that government out of office by coup in 2014.
And while the US is no longer able to use its financial influence to command Russian behavior, it has still been doing that with Ukraine.
Trump was impeached the first time, after all, because he allegedly held up the congressionally ordered payment of military aid to Ukraine. (The Democrats said he had done so to force Ukraine to assist him in building a narrative that his then-rival for the presidency Joe Biden had engaged in corruption in Ukraine. Trump pointed to Biden's having boasted quite publicly that as vice-president and the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine that he said he would block the disbursement of $1 billion in aid to Ukraine if Ukraine's prosecutor general was not replaced. Trump allies alleged that Biden was trying, among other things, to keep the prosecutor general from investigating Biden's son's business dealings in Ukraine.)
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteHey, I am happy that at least someone is reading it, whether they agree or disagree.
I see that two posts I thought had been accepted by the platform did not stick/got deleted. They should have appeared before my 4:57pm post that talks about Yeltsin's 1996 re-election.
ReplyDeleteThey are important to the argument, so I will try again, but without the live links:
It's important to remember that the Russians were under extreme financial pressure throughout the 1990s. The significance of this fact cannot be overstated.
Gorbachev had largely been pushed into agreeing to the reunification of Germany and the inclusion of Germany into NATO, something very much opposed by Soviet hardliners, because he desperately needed money to keep his economy running. The West, including the US (partly through the US-dominated World Bank and IMF), agreed to provide funding. A lot of the money came directly from Germany.
After the Soviet Union dissolved and Yeltsin became Russia's first president, the Russian economy continued to struggle. So although the Russians, especially hardliners in the Duma, were extremely opposed to NATO expansion, Yeltsin and his ministers felt obliged to try to work with the West to get financial aid. This led to Yeltsin, after meeting with Lech Walesa in Warsaw, saying in a press conference to the horror of his aides that Russia would welcome Poland's entry into NATO. He subsequently was persuaded by his aides to say that NATO and Russia should offer joint security guarantees to the Central Europeans rather than expand NATO. The Russian position continued to be that NATO must not place military assets in other former Soviet countries on Russia's borders.
Yeltsin was himself very anti-Soviet and was enthusiastic about moving Russia to a pro-capitalist "free-market" economy. He faced a lot of resistance from opponents in Russia, with at least one attempted coup that I recall and an impeachment. He also had little public support at various points, polling in the single digits. He felt he kept needing money from the US and its allies to show his people that he was producing positive results, not just the pain that was directly resulting from the economic policies he was pursuing. So a lot of what the memoirs of key players on the US side say about Gorbachev (during the Bush I admin) and Yeltsin involve their begging the US and West for money and acquiescing on or trying to avoid discussing issues that the US was pressing on but that many Russians opposed.
(Contd)
ReplyDeleteThen at the end of the 90s Putin came in. With the dramatic rise in oil prices that accompanied the US's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russian economy found a far steadier footing.
oil prices graph:
https://www.economist.com/img/b/1280/826/90/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20161022_SRC614.png
Russia was ready to pay back its IMF loans ahead of schedule.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1002798398542331960
Putin was angry that the West was not treating Russia with the respect that he felt it deserved as a great power. Through all this period, the US and its allies continued to add additional countries to NATO, and Bush kept announcing plans to install new military assets in countries at or near the Russian borders, despite repeated objections from Russia.
By 2008, Russia had had enough:
https://www.dw.com/en/russia-talks-tough-in-response-to-natos-eastward-expansion/a-3261078
"Russia's determination to protect its borders took a bellicose turn Friday, April 11, when a top army general vowed to take military action if NATO expands east to include its former Soviet neighbors Georgia and Ukraine....
NATO turned down Georgia and Ukraine's applications for Membership Action Plans -- a stepping stone to membership -- but, under pressure from Washington, one of the strongest advocates of enlargement in the alliance, the alliance did say both would eventually become NATO members....
'We will do all we can to prevent Ukraine's and Georgia's accession into NATO and to avoid an inevitable serious exacerbation of our relations with both the alliance and our neighbors,' Lavrov told reporters.
Russia opposes the plan to grant membership on the grounds that such a move would pose a direct threat to its security....
President Vladimir Putin said in February that Russia would consider directing its missiles at Ukraine if the neighboring state ever hosted NATO military installations.
Russia's fears have also been stoked by plans by the United States to install interceptor missiles and radar stations in Poland and the Czech Republic as part of a wider missile defense shield designed to protect the US from attack by rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.
Lavrov warned earlier this week that states hosting parts of a US missile defense shield also risked facing a military response if Moscow's security concerns were not met."
Eric,
ReplyDeleteYour comments have been quite useful in my finding my way through all the confusion of the last few days.
On the one hand, I hear the consensus mainstream Western media discourse that U.S. and Nato policy had nothing to do with Putin's invasion.
Here in Chile I also listen to those believe Putin's narrative, that the Ukraine is dominated by neo-Nazis, who are committing massive human rights abuses against the Russian-speaking minority.
At times I don't know who or what to believe. Before the invasion, I believed that Putin might invade Donbas, but that the idea that he was planning to invade all of Ukraine was just CIA propaganda.
So I'm genuinely trying to orientate myself in what seems to be a new world order. And thus, independent-minded comments like yours are very welcome.
Since the US's relations with Canada and Mexico have often been mentioned here, if you haven't already ridiculed it, you might find this interesting:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/lauren-boebert-canada-liberated-like-ukraine_n_621befeae4b0d1388f16985a
S. wallerstein
ReplyDeleteI am curious about who(artists, politicians, pundits, etc)are espousing Putin's narrative in Chile and why are they doing it. I have tried to search evidence for hours about "massive human rights abuses" and have found none.
Marco Aurelio Denegri,
ReplyDeleteThere are those on the far left who were so traumatized by the coup and the fact that it was supported by el imperialismo yanqui that they love all enemies of the United States. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, they claim.
Here's an article by one of Salvador Allende's grandsons supporting Putin. By the way,
not all of Allende's grandchildren share his views: one of his grand-daughters will be Defense Minister in the government of Gabriel Boric, which will take power in about a week. Boric condemned Putin's invasion and while critical of U.S. imperialism (as I am too), does not necessarily believe that the enemy of his enemies are necessarily good people.
https://360noticias.cl/nieto-de-allende-pablo-sepulveda-allende-critico-a-gabriel-boric-por-apoyo-al-regimen-pro-nazi-de-ucrania/
I don't know Allende's grandson, but I do know people who think as he does. I was once closer to them, but it's always sad to distance oneself from friends.
I am taking a break from writing the first brief which is due by Friday and popped in to see how the dialogue is going. I want to thank Prof. Wilson for his supportive words regarding the synagogue protest case. The lawsuit has been a rather disheartening experience for me in several respects, aside from the decision of the 6th Circuit dismissing the lawsuit. When I proposed the lawsuit to the synagogue and its members, there were many members of the synagogue who disagreed with me and maintained that the signs of the protesters were protected by the 1st Amendment. I was asked to meet with a committee which the synagogue had formed to evaluate measures on how to deal with the protesters. They concluded that the best solution was just to ignore the signs. I disagreed, that ignoring them, and not challenging them in court, would just encourage anti-Semitic protests. I met with the members of the committee, three of whom were law professors at the U of M Law School. They also disagreed with me and maintained that the signs were protected by the 1st Amendment. One of the law professors said he was appealing to my sense of ethics and asked me not to pursue the lawsuit because it would weaken the 1st Amendment’s protections. My jaw literally dropped open. My sense of ethics? How could challenging the right of protesters to engage in anti-Semitic speech in front of a synagogue be unethical?
ReplyDeleteThen the District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit asserting that the two plaintiffs whom I was representing, one of whom is a Holocaust survivor, did not have standing to sue. She ruled that the emotional distress they asserted they experienced from seeing the signs as they entered the synagogue to worship was not a sufficiently concrete injury to allow them to sue to curtail the protests, given the 1st Amendment defense. I was flabbergasted. Thousands of cases have held that emotional distress alone can constitute an injury sufficient to sue in court. Why was this case different? On appeal, the 6th Circuit. In a 2 to 1 decision, reversed the judge’s decision regarding standing and held that the plaintiff’s emotional distress was a sufficient injury to afford them standing. It then proceeded to hold, however, that even if they had standing to sue, the protesters’ use of the signs – including the anti-Semitic signs – are protected by the 1st Amendment and may not be curtailed in any way via an injunction. That is the principal issue which I am contesting in the petition for a writ of certiorari. I maintain that hate speech used in proximity to any house of worship of any religion is not impregnably protected by the 1st Amendment such that no injunctive relief is available to place reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on the use of the signs, for example, that the signs be a given distance from the house of worship and not permitted to be used when the congregants are attending services at their house of worship.
Here’s the kicker. After I filed the petition in the Supreme Court, the attorneys for the protesters filed a motion requesting that the District Court judge – the same judge who held that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue – award the protesters attorney fees to be given to the attorneys, even though their attorneys had represented them pro bono. Guess what – three weeks ago the judge ruled that the lawsuit was frivolous and awarded the protesters $159,000 in attorney fees, to be paid by the two plaintiffs and myself. The judge is thus requiring that an 80-year old Holocaust survivor must pay attorney fees to the protesters who have used signs to insult her religion and Jewish ethnicity as she enters the synagogue to pray. That decision is also now on appeal to the 6th Circuit.
Back to my brief writing.
S. Wallerstein
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. It appears that there are sects of the left with that same line of thinking in most Latin American nations. There is strong resentment for the abuses of the last century.
“ Guess what – three weeks ago the judge ruled that the lawsuit was frivolous and awarded the protesters $159,000 in attorney fees, to be paid by the two plaintiffs and myself.”
ReplyDeleteAnd your charming personality wasn’t able to get you out of it? Lol
Clinton, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright talked about furthering the integration and unification of Europe, and spreading norms of democracy and peaceful dispute resolution, etc. The means they chose was to enlarge an alliance in which the U.S. played a leading or dominant role, one that had been formed in the early days of the Cold War.
ReplyDeleteOne perspective would or does see this as part of the implementation of a quasi-imperialist project to "neuter" the former USSR.
An alternative view is that Clinton, Christopher, and Albright, while not unmindful of the economic dimension, did, at least to some extent, really want to spread norms of peaceful dispute resolution, etc. Even if it was partly to make the world safe for multinational capitalist enterprise or whatever, the outcome of spreading norms of peaceful dispute resolution wd have been presumably desirable. But -- whether through pressures of organizational and bureaucratic inertia, or pressure from the Right (e.g. Gingrich et al.) in the U.S., or a misguided belief that an organization dedicated for decades to one set of goals could easily pivot to a whole new "mission" -- they chose the wrong instrument, namely NATO expansion.
What they probably should have done instead is declare that with the end of the Cold War, the threat that NATO had been formed to counter no longer existed and thus NATO no longer needed to exist. European countries no longer needed this kind of collective security arrangement, because the "new threats" that Christopher cited -- terrorism, proliferation of WMD, etc. -- did not require it.
They could have taken the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which already existed, elevated it, and focused it on the "new threats." Or they could have created, with the participation of former NATO members and others, a new organization. Russia could have been offered membership on the same terms as everyone else. (The Partnership for Peace could have been a first step in that direction if it had been given more prominence and if it had been coupled with the abolition of NATO, which might have pushed the Partnership for Peace into becoming something more significant.)
Instead, they chose NATO expansion, a misguided policy reflecting a lack of strategic imagination and a failure to grasp the opportunity that the end of the Cold War presented. The revolutions in E. Europe of 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the USSR were seismic, transformative changes, reflecting, as the popular uprisings against the stagnant, repressive Communist regimes in Romania and the GDR (E. Germany) showed, a widespread discontent with the system that the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries embodied. If ever a moment presented itself to start with a clean slate and create new organizations for security and cooperation, that was it. And the moment was missed.
LFC, the above seems to assume good faith actors with common interests and objectives being present at an inflection point. How do these new organizations change anything internal to Russia? Yeltsin sobers up? The 1990s financial fiascos don't happen? Chechnya doesn't happen? Oligarchs suddenly prefer civil society and moderate wealth to yachts, Trump condos most of the Russian GDP? NATO didn't drop those folks out of windows and poison folks in Germany and the UK or force Russia into a personality cult.
ReplyDeleteThe only way the current war doesn't happen was:
1. No Maidan and Putin's stooge persists.
2. Maidan happens , Obama doesn't slow walk arms, then Clinton wins and
Ukraine gets all sorts of goodies.
U.S. abuses and interventions have left a lot of traumas and scars in Latin America. Lots of people who don't trust the United States and who assume that the United States always has evil intentions. I believe that's true in the Middle East too, after U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, their backing of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, interventions in Libia and Syria and their constant aggressions against Iran. People who think like that don't see Assad as the "bad guy" and the U.S. as the "good guy", as so many do in this blog, but rather Assad as another victim of "el imperialismo". In certain circles on the Chilean left if one speaks of "el imperialismo", it is understood that one refers to U.S. imperialism: there is no other in their worldview.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's important to understand nuances and I try to, but most people don't. People in the U.S. are constantly surprised when others don't perceive them as they do themselves, as generally "well-intentioned" in their foreign policy, as being the global champions of democracy and freedom.
s.w. I understand your point. That is one of the reasons I reject the whole "sphere of influence" mishigas as a concept that has repeatedly failed and inevitably leads to all sorts of blowback - Central America and Iran being good examples.
ReplyDeleteLFC: "Clinton, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright talked about furthering the integration and unification of Europe, and spreading norms of democracy and peaceful dispute resolution, etc.... One perspective would or does see this as part of the implementation of a quasi-imperialist project to "neuter" the former USSR.
ReplyDeleteAn alternative view is that Clinton, Christopher, and Albright, while not unmindful of the economic dimension, did, at least to some extent, really want to spread norms of peaceful dispute resolution, etc."
I don't see those perspectives as being in conflict. I think both were the case.
I think they really do believe their BS, and they wanted to spread democracy and peace (on their own terms).
But they are so full of themselves and their American Exceptionalism that they can't see that their own actions and ideology might be part of the problem.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response (and your digging up of the quotes etc.). I understand the point and where you're coming from.
I've had my say, and then some, in the last few days, and barring some point that I feel absolutely has to be made, I have decided not to engage further on these issues.
I'm reading to some extent what everyone is writing here, but I have other things to do and am not planning to say much of anything else on this subject.
P.s. Also there is something about the repulsiveness of this conflict (in terms of the clear- cut aggression w.o justification) that makes me think, as I listen to radio interviews w Ukrainian civilians, that all of the discussion can wait. I have no further appetite for it rt now. Just as I have no urge to discuss the war in Yemen right now either, for instance.
ReplyDeleteEric,
ReplyDeleteAlthough a bit late, I also want to thank you for those comments. I can't say I know much on that subject, and your exposition helped me a great deal.
I would like to ask you something though. When did Warren Christopher write this:
By including Italy, the only defeated Axis nation among NATO's twelve original members, the alliance accelerated the democratization of that country. Similarly, the addition of Greece and Turkey in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982 produced dramatic corollary benefits....
I ask because Francisco Franco died in 1975. At his death liberal democracy was established in Spain. I can't see Spain's joining NATO contributing anything to its democratization.
Moreover, countries like Hungary and Poland are not shining lights in terms of democracy, although they are members of NATO. But perhaps one could defend Christopher's views on the grounds that those countries may need more time to fully evolve into democracies.
The trouble is that Turkey has been a member for a lot longer, and still remains very far from a liberal democracy.
- The AnonyMouse
The AnonyMouse,
ReplyDelete"Chances of a Lifetime: A Memoir," published in 2001.
Christopher died in 2011.
The paragraph I elided after "corollary benefits" is:
West Germany's admission contributed to the reconciliation of France and Germany and, eventually, to the formation of the European Union. The admission of Greece and Turkey prompted these adversaries to move their dispute over Cyprus from the brink of armed hostility to the mediation table. And NATO's embrace of Spain ensured that the Spanish military would remain under civilian control in uncertain times following the death of Francisco Franco.
https://apkmodule.com/wynk-music-mod-apk/
ReplyDeleteWynk Music MOD APK