The Russia Ukraine war still rages on, dominating headlines in news, analyses, opinions and talk shows. The media wages a more heated war of its own, aiming to steer international public opinion in specific directions. To attain this purpose, media persons and politicians resort to every and any tool, legitimate or illegitimate, even up to falsifying facts and fabricating events. Thankfully, there are a few brave people who choose to surf against the tide to expose what they see as irrational or unbridled policies of specific leaders or countries.
I reviewed in my last editorial the address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to both the Russians and Ukrainians. President Putin defined the historic roots that unite both peoples, and the provocations of the West in reneging on the agreed upon military balance between East and West, leading up to the current conflict. I reviewed the main points in President Putin’s speech not because I agree or disagree with his decisions or actions, but to create some informational equilibrium with what is propagated by the western media which hegemonises most of the global information sphere. That media has taken to lamenting the “loss of democracy and human rights” in Ukraine on account of the war, and picturing the faceoff as an unjust confrontation between the Russian devil and the Ukrainian victim.
Today I present views and readings of the current situation, by a number of American officials who were sufficiently bold to depart from the opinions voiced in mainstream western media. Some insinuated and others stressed that what looks like a Russian military invasion of Ukraine is but another episode of the political and military faceoff between the two world superpowers: the Americans and their European allies on one hand, and the Russians and their Chinese and North Korean allies on the other.
In a seminar hosted by Yale University, one of the speakers whose name does not figure on the video footage that I received, said: “… The key word in this crisis is “compromise”, let me go back to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962; two totally independent leaders, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro decide that it would be a good idea for Russia to deploy missiles on Cuban soil. Did they have the right to make that decision? Absolutely, they’re two independent countries. So they make that agreement, and the Soviets begin bringing in the missiles or the parts to assemble them. The United States discovers this; Kennedy says to the Russians ‘turn your ships around or we will sink them, and if that leads to World War III so be it’. And the Russians turned their ships around. But there was a compromise not made public in this country at that time; Kennedy agreed to pull out American missiles that were deployed in Turkey in exchange, because the Russians said ‘look, you have missiles in Turkey right on our borders almost, you say our missiles are an existential threat, well so are yours; take them out and we will not deploy ours. That was a compromise…It helped abort World War III.”
Yale speaker went on to explain that the Russian leadership sees NATO as an existential threat, this is not politics, but national security, why would you bring NATO closer and closer to Russian borders? This happened in Latvia then in Estonia, and now Ukraine wants to join the European Union, and will become a NATO member. Accordingly, the Russian Navy which was always based in Sevastopol over the Black Sea, will be in a probable conflict with the American Sixth fleet. The Russians see this as an existential danger, and they say that they will not permit it. The Yale speaker then confirmed that this does not correspond to international law. “But when you talk about existential threat, you don’t care about international law, as in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962… It is my opinion that had from the very outset been some kind of an internationally negotiated agreement that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO for at least the next 50 years, there would be no Ukrainian problem.”
American FOX News Channel hosted Colonel Douglas MacGregor, former senior advisor to the Secretary of Defence. He said that President Putin is carrying through on something that he has been warning about for at least the last 15 years, which is that he will not tolerate US forces or their missiles on his borders, much as the US would not tolerate Russian troops or missiles in Cuba. “We ignored him,” Colonel MacGregor said, “and he finally reacted; he was not going to allow Ukraine under any circumstances to join NATO.” He explained that what’s happened is that the battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over; all the Ukrainian troops there are being largely surrounded and cut off… “If they do not surrender,” he said, “I suspect that the Russians will ultimately annihilate them. That’s why Ukrainian President Zelensky is going to have to negotiate with the Russians the best deal he can get…the American administration has already told him that they would back him if he opts for neutrality for Ukraine.” Colonel MacGregor said to FOX News that he thinks Vladimir Putin will do that for western Ukraine, but beyond it in the east he was not sure what Putin has planned there, because this is the part that is adjacent to Russia. “President Putin could decide to form a new republic and annex it to Russia,” Colonel MacGregor said, “because historically it had been Russian. But the territory west of Ukraine is not. He knows that and he’s happy to live with that as a neutral State.” Colonel MacGregor explained that the western world is trying to drag Putin into a military conflict that he is not interested in, and that he will not allow to be dragged into. Putin is working on securing the borders of his country against NATO threats. Where democracy and human rights are concerned, Colonel MacGregor pointed out, Ukraine falls sorely short of western standards, too short to warrant this faceoff with Russia. Accordingly, he said, the West should stay out of that conflict; he said the American people think their country needs to stay out of it, let alone European countries, although they surrender to pressure from the US administration. Colonel MacGregor told FOX News that the US should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in this “hopeless endeavour”. “I see no reason why we should fight with the Russians over something that they have been talking about for years, while we simply chose to ignore it,” Colonel MacGregor said. “The thing that is so disturbing is that on the one hand we would not send our forces to fight, but we are urging Ukrainians to die pointlessly in a fight they can’t win. We are going to create a far worse humanitarian disaster than anything we’ve seen thus far if it doesn’t stop,” Colonel MacGregor warned.
For her part, American politician and candidate for presidency in 2020, Tulsi Gabbard, said that President Biden could end this crisis and prevent a war with Russia, by guaranteeing that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO, because otherwise, that would put US and NATO troops directly on the doorstep of Russia, which as Putin has laid out, would undermine Russian national security interests. Quoting Ms Gabbard: “It is highly highly unlikely that Ukraine will ever become a member of NATO.. So the question is, why doesn’t President Biden and NATO leaders actually just say that?” According to Ms Gabbard, this points to one conclusion, which is they want Russia to invade Ukraine, because it gives them a clear excuse to levy draconian sanctions, which are a modern day siege against Russia and the Russian people, thus cementing this Cold War in place. Ms Gabbard sees that the military industrial complex is in fact the one that benefits from this, which it already did during the US war against al-Qaeda. “And who pays the price? The American people, the Ukrainian people and the Russian people pay the price,” Ms Gabbard said, pointing out that in addition to that, it undermines the US national security, but the military industrial complex that controls so many American politicians wins. Ms Gabbard said that all we hear from the American administration is that it has to defend democracy in Ukraine, but in fact this current Ukrainian regime cracks down on democracy, arrests political opposition, and shuts down public opinion platforms. “I have a hard time seeing how President Biden can say with an honest face that the American administration is defending democracy in Ukraine,” Ms Gabbard said.
Watani International
9 March 2022