Assuming we have a geopolitical stalemate over Ukraine, here’s what to expect next…
Press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba (Image Source: NATO)
Alex Krainer
Covert Action Magazine
The days of unchallenged U.S./NATO dominance are over
For some reason, in the aftermath of this month’s failed talks among the Russian, American and NATO representatives in Geneva, everybody is talking as though they believe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is imminent. From the officials of the U.S. State Department, Pentagon and NATO to the intelligence agencies and the media, nearly everyone is talking as though they have not the slightest doubt that Russia intends to invade.
However, in a Friday meeting with president Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Biden not to provoke panic, saying that he did not see a greater threat now then during a similar massing of troops last spring. Russian president Vladimir Putin is indeed both a cautious and calculating leader who has increased Russia’s strength and global position incrementally over the last twenty years. His current strategy appears to center on solidifying Russia’s newfound alliance with China, building up Russia’s military strength, cementing a Eurasian union, and increasingly moving into the Middle East and expanding alliances with pro-Russian regimes there, notably in Syria and Iran. These maneuvers threaten U.S. and western hegemony and may prove detrimental to the global banking cartel which is at the forefront of the push to try and provoke war and weaken and destroy Russia today.
The 1990 promise: not one inch eastward!
Let’s briefly summarize the recent history of relations between Russia and the West. In February 1990 the Soviet Union was still intact and Germany still divided: West Germany was a NATO member and East Germany was a communist, Soviet bloc country.
The U.S. Government asked Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev for the Soviet Union’s cooperation on its plan for German reunification. In consideration for Soviet withdrawal from East Germany, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” This commitment was reiterated by other U.S. officials. The Soviets withdrew and Germany was reunited, but the U.S. broke its promise and, over the next 27 years, the NATO alliance expanded many inches eastward, adding 14 new member states, all of them in the direction of Russia’s borders. A glance at the “before” and “after” maps is enough to see why Russia feels concerned about this:
Today, the alliance is in the process of absorbing Ukraine and Georgia with the view to their eventual full membership. This represents a “red line” for Russia, but NATO insists the alliance membership is open to any “European state in a position to further the principles of [the North Atlantic Treaty] and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Despite the fact that the Communist bloc no longer exists, the NATO alliance regards Russia as an enemy and consistently maintains a hostile posture toward it. Over the years, NATO has nearly quadrupled its military forces near Russia’s borders.
As professor Stephen Cohen noted in 2016, “The last time there was this kind of Western hostile military force on Russia’s borders was when Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. There has never been anything like this. During the 40-year Cold War there was this vast buffer zone that ran from the Soviet borders all the way to Berlin. There were no NATO or American troops there. This is a very radical departure on the part of the [Obama] administration.”
Indeed, NATO has continued to stockpile heavy weaponry, building up permanent logistics infrastructure, and deploying more and more troops along Russian borders. The U.S. has built missile “defense” bases in Romania and Poland, deployed nuclear bomb-capable aircraft close to Russia and allocated more than $8 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money to upgrade its arsenal of B-61 nuclear bombs kept in the United States and five other NATO-member nations.
Absorbing Ukraine into NATO
In 2017 Ukraine’s Parliament passed legislation making its membership in NATO a strategic policy objective. In 2019, this objective was enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution. And while its full membership in NATO is ostensibly not on the table, the alliance is clearly advancing to fully integrate Ukraine as a partner, which will bring NATO right onto Russia’s doorstep.
The cooperation between Ukraine and NATO began in 1994. In July 2013 (that’s right, five months before the Maidan coup kicked off), NATO began to implement the “Defense Education Enhancement Program” (DEEP) in Ukraine, nothing short of a comprehensive overhaul of Ukraine’s military training and educational institutions. From 2013 through 2018, it deployed more than 350 training teams focused not only on educating military officers but also “a new generation of Ukrainian diplomats and high-level officials” as well as press officers.
This is important to keep in mind because, when Ukraine’s “high level officials” speak to Western audiences in polished prose and fluent English, usually these are not democratically elected representatives of the people of Ukraine but rather NATO’s own trained flaks delivering well-rehearsed talking points…
Continue this analysis at Covert Action
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