Links 8/6/2024
Print/DownloadRegarding John Mearsheimer good article. I think he misses some points for continuing to put blame on Russia for invading Ukraine, despite the facts.
Historically, Russia is mostly a reactive state while opportunistically at times, when circumstances rose that land grabbing came at very little price. Examples abound.
As such, accusing Russia of wanting to re-establish a lost empire flyies in the face of evidence. The prima facie example is the 2008 war against Georgia, which was started by Georgia, which attacked the separatist areas protected by Russian peace forces. Georgians got a thorough beating, which given recent events in Georgia, the government definitely remembers, and the Russian forces retreated after 2 weeks. As RFL reported, an EU commission on the facts found only that Russians mistreated prisoners, but nothing else to accuse Russians with.
However, the US has learned from that event and in the case of Ukraine, the provocation that was created was easily covered up by the Western MSM.
Professor Mearsheimer contents that Russia is guilty of attacking Ukraine, but fails to provide the full context for it, and the facts on the ground matter:
1. In March 2021, Ukraine passed legislation that demanded the UKR government recovers control over all UKR recognized territory, by any means necessary (that meant not only Donbas & Lugansk Republics but Crimea as well).
2. Follow that UKR ammased troops in Donbas, to which russians immediately mobilized 90,000 troops at UKR border. US panicks and then some discussions take place in Geneva.
3. UKR has not in fact remove troops from the borders with Donbas & Lugansk.
4. After the rejection of RUS strategic negociation package by the West, UKR starts in early February 2022 to massively shell Donbas, as reported by OSCE observers, totally breaching the Minsk Accords sanctioned by the UNSC.
5. Children and women and elderly are moved with hundreds of busses from the proximity of the border.
6. Donbas & Lugansk ask RUS for support.
7. On February 22, RUS recognizes the independence of the two republics, using Kosovo as a legal precedent, signs treaties of alliance.
8. The West immediately sanctions Russia and excludes it from SWIFT banking messaging system.
9. Russia invoques article 51 of UN Charter in support of Donbas and Lugansk and on February 24 attacks UKR.
The legality of Russian actions is really unassailable in any unbiased international court. The fact that immediately wanted to start talks and negotiations with UKR proves that all it wanted was peace and security of its borders.
But as mentioned by Prof Mearsheimer, Russia cannot and will not tolerate an anti-Russia Ukraine, which is how Ukraine has beein slowly defining itself after 1991, and faster and faster after 2014, reaching all aspects of life. That is what Russia means by de-nazification of UKR. Because in the Russian experience, the Third Reich had the same message (see Generalplan Ost), KILL the Russians.
As George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney said after the war started:
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I’m using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield.,” “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
