US’s Support
for Invasions Should Disqualify It From Leading on Russia-Ukraine
President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House, on September 1, 2021, in Washington, D.C.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
The United States and Russia are heading toward a
dangerous showdown over Ukraine, as the U.S. has 8,500 troops on high alert, ready to
deploy to Eastern Europe should Russia invade Ukraine, and a new round of arms shipments have begun
arriving in Ukraine.
On the one hand, Russia’s ongoing occupation of
Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, its support of armed insurgents in eastern Ukraine
and threats of further military action against that country must be challenged
by the international community — though not through war. Unfortunately, the
United States is in no position to take any leadership in strategy or action
against Russian aggression.
Just as U.S. military action in the greater Middle
East in the name of protecting Americans from ideological extremism and
violence in the area has ended up largely encouraging ideological extremism,
Russia’s actions in the name of protecting Russians from far right Ukrainian
ultranationalists — a small but well-armed minority in that country — will
likely only encourage that militant movement as well. The United States,
therefore, needs to avoid any actions that could encourage dangerous
ultranationalist tendencies among either Russians or Ukrainians. Polls show
most Russians are at best ambivalent about the Kremlin’s moves in
Ukraine. Provocative actions by the United States would more likely
solidify support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegitimate actions.
Ukraine is seeking international military support
in part because it no longer has a nuclear “deterrent.” Ukraine gave up the
nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union as result of the 1994
Budapest Treaty signed by Russia, Ukraine, the United States, France, Great
Britain and China. In return for Ukrainian disarmament, the treaty guaranteed
the country’s territorial integrity and provided assurances that signatories would
not engage in threats or use of force. Putin has violated that agreement,
thereby leading many Ukrainians to seek protection under the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), the Cold War alliance which would require NATO
members to come to Ukraine’s defense if attacked.
There are quite a number of reasons why having
Ukraine join NATO would nevertheless be a bad idea. Indeed, it was the eastward
expansion of NATO, violating the promise made to Soviet Premier Mikhail
Gorbachev in 1989, which is partly responsible for Russia’s resurgent
reactionary nationalism that made possible the rise of Putin. As a country
which has been invaded from Europe via Ukraine on four occasions, having
Ukraine as part of NATO — which was ostensibly formed to defend Western Europe
from the USSR — is unnecessarily provocative, particularly since it was
originally formed back in 1949 as a supposedly defensive alliance against a
superpower which no longer exists.
Just as NATO members and the Soviet Union during
the Cold War agreed that countries like Finland and Austria could develop their
own democratic systems as nonaligned nations free from threats of foreign
aggression, a similar agreement could potentially defuse the current crisis.
The Biden administration appears to have rejected that potential compromise,
however, by going on record in support of granting Ukraine NATO
membership.
At the same time, the United States is correct in
asserting that Russia has no right to determine whether another country can or
cannot join NATO or any other military alliance, even if that country is
located on its border. The Biden administration is also correct in noting the
absurdity of the Kremlin’s claims that Ukraine is somehow a threat to the
larger and more powerful Russia.
However, the same could be said of Cuba and
Nicaragua in relation to the United States. In recent decades, the United
States has attacked both countries, as well as invading tiny Grenada and
supporting coups in Guatemala, Chile, and elsewhere due to those governments’ strategic
and economic cooperation with Moscow. Washington insisted that these countries —
far smaller and weaker than Ukraine and not even sharing a border with the
United States — were national security threats requiring the president to
declare extraordinary powers to protect the country. Indeed, the United States
has intervened militarily as far away as Africa and Central Asia to topple
governments that were allying with Moscow.
The United States maintains strict sanctions on
Cuba and Nicaragua today, as it does Venezuela. For many years, Americans could
be jailed simply for spending money in Cuba as tourists and the U.S. refused to
even recognize the Cuban government until barely a decade ago. (Though the
restricted political rights and civil liberties in those countries have often
been cited as justification for Washington’s hostility, the close relationship
the United States has had with far more repressive dictatorships in the Middle
East and elsewhere makes clear that it was not these leftist countries’ systems
of government that were the impetus for U.S. actions.)
President Biden has correctly pointed out that
pre-emptive war, as Russia is threatening against Ukraine, is illegal.
International law does not allow any country to invade another simply because
they fear it might eventually become a threat. However, then-Senator Biden used
that very reasoning — the possibility of a future threat — in supporting the
2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Indeed, even after the U.S. takeover of that
oil-rich country and the failure to find any of the “weapons of mass
destruction” he claimed that Iraq had reconstituted after a UN-led disarmament
process, Biden still defended the invasion on the
grounds that Iraq might have nevertheless become a threat sometime in the future.
As with the United States during the Cold War,
Russia’s hostility toward Ukraine is not simply about potential foreign
alliances. Russia may perceive Ukraine’s democratic government (as imperfect as
it indeed is) as a “threat” to its increasingly autocratic system — similar to
the U.S.’s intervention against socialist governments (as imperfect as their
forms of socialism may have been) due to perceived “threats” to the U.S.-driven
global capitalist order.
Likewise, Russia’s claims that the limited amount
of U.S. aid to Ukrainian liberal opposition groups was somehow responsible for
the 2004-2005 and 2013-2014
popular uprisings against unpopular pro-Russian governments are
as ludicrous as the U.S.’s claims that the limited Soviet aid to leftist
opposition groups was responsible for the socialist revolutions in Central
America, Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, and elsewhere. Though both Moscow and
Washington have certainly sought to take advantage of such uprisings to advance
their geopolitical agendas, it is wrong to deny agency to the people of those
countries who put their bodies on the line in challenging their corrupt and
repressive governments.
Biden is correct in noting that countries cannot
unilaterally change international boundaries or expand their territories by
force, and that such acts of aggression, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea
in 2014, are clearly illegal under international law. However, the Biden administration has upheld the
Trump administration’s decision to formally recognize Israel’s illegal
annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights (seized in 1967) and Morocco’s illegal
annexation of the entire nation of Western Sahara (conquered in 1975), the only
country in the world to do so. U.S. government maps show these conquered lands
as simply a part of the occupying powers with no delineation between these
countries’ internationally recognized borders and their occupied territories,
demonstrating that the United States does not necessarily support upholding
these international legal norms.
The international community must certainly take
nonmilitary actions to deter further Russian aggression and end the occupation
of Crimea. However, given that the United States is led by an administration
which has demonstrated that it does not actually oppose such aggression on
principle, the United States is in no position to lead any international effort
in defense of international law and the right of self-determination.
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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