Many U.S. politicians claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. In fact, by moving NATO missile bases in Poland and Romania near the Russian border, and stating repeatedly that Ukraine would join NATO, the U.S. and NATO created severe threats to Russia’s national security.
When Russia reacted to these threatening Western moves and warned the U.S. that it was crossing Russia’s red lines, President Joe Biden ignored these repeated warnings. Why?
American experts on Russia and foreign policy, including former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock, had warned politicians that pushing NATO right up to the borders of Russia would be seen as a severe threat by Russia and stated that the perception was very reasonable on Russia’s part. Think what the U.S. would do if Russia engaged in a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, and constructed missile bases right on our borders in those countries. In fact, when Russia brought missiles into Cuba in the 1960s to prevent a U.S. invasion of the island, the U.S. threatened a blockade and an invasion. Russia then withdrew the missiles. The Russian missiles in Cuba were close to the U.S. border but not nearly as close as those in Poland and Romania are to Russia, nor as close as NATO missiles threatened for Ukraine would be. The NATO missiles can be quickly switched to be offensive weapons targeting Moscow or other Russian cities and would strike Moscow a few minutes from launching.
Our other provocations include our withdrawal from two treaties with Russia that limited missiles: the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty. These withdrawals increased Russian vulnerability to a U.S. first strike. In addition, NATO has conducted military exercises near Russia’s border, including live-fire exercises simulating attacks on Russian air defense systems.
The other major factor pushing Russia to invade was the Ukrainian military’s eight-year-long assault on the more Russian-oriented Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which resisted the unconstitutional 2014 U.S.-directed coup. That coup occurred when then-Vice President Biden was President Barack Obama’s “point man” on Ukraine. I consider it clear evidence of U.S. direction of the coup in a secretly recorded phone call between the U.S. ambassador and a U.S. State Department official that is available on YouTube.
The coup overthrew the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The U.S. quickly came to the aid of this unconstitutional coup, which shows our claim to support democracy for the lie that it is. When many Ukrainian citizens opposed the coup, some were massacred, and a civil war ensued. The new Ukrainian government conducted atrocities, bombing and shelling civilians. By 2022, this civil war had taken the lives of over 14,000 Ukrainians, mostly civilians in eastern Ukraine, according to the United Nations. Over 2 million refugees have fled due to the civil war.
The extreme recklessness of President Biden’s continuous escalation of our role in this war is greatly endangering the survival of not only the people of the U.S. but also humanity as a whole. We bragged that we targeted and sank Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea and have escalated the conflict through shipments of weapons to Ukraine, now to include advanced tanks. Escalation can get out of hand. Russia could flatten the U.S. several times over with its nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons create firestorms that would kill millions and then blot out the sun with smoke and dust, preventing the growth of food crops and ensuring the starvation of survivors of the blasts.
The Peaceseekers, a new Delaware group that is a member of the national Peace in Ukraine coalition, advocates an immediate cease-fire and unconditional negotiations. Since Ukraine has been guilty of atrocities of its own and relentlessly assaulted the eastern part of Ukraine for eight years, it has lost its claim over these areas and should be forced to relinquish them to an autonomous state or to annexation by Russia, which has been, to some extent, supporting the Donbas region to defend itself against the Ukrainian military and its U.S. backers.
Desmond M. Kahn
Newark
