The corporate media, politicians and all the controlled NGO’s throughout America and Western Europe were in agreement when they claimed that the Russian military action against eastern Ukraine was unprovoked, unjustified, and an act of aggression that cannot be tolerated.
This propaganda blitz had one problem: It was completely false. The Deep State, the government elites, intelligence communities, and military establishment, has spent decades trying to threaten and provoke Russia by pushing NATO against their borders.
This is not something you have to like. You can also detest Vladimir Putin until they return to their home. We know this because the Russians see NATO at their border as an act or aggression and a threat their national security. This has been known for many decades.
The record is unassailable and clear.
As the Soviet Union was breaking apart and peace was possible around the globe, in 1990, the United States, represented by James Baker, Secretary of State, pledged that NATO would not move towards the Russian border. This promise was crucial to the dissolution of Soviet military divisions in East Germany and the eventual unification of the country. This promise provided security for the dissolution and disintegration of the Soviet Union. The resistance to the disintegration would have been fierce and almost certain violent without such a guarantee.
It had been less 50 years since Russia invaded. Russians lost 25 to 35 million lives in the Second World War. Russians are well aware of the other invasions that caused pain, death, and destruction for an untold number of their fellow citizens. Americans have never been subject to an invasion from another country. (The war of 1812 was only a short and minor battle.
Secretary of State Baker did the right things to calm a legitimate concern and facilitate the disintegration and release of hundreds of millions of Soviet prisoners. The U.S. foreign policies establishment, as expressed in NATO or the E.U., began to break before the ink was even dry. It began to break its word.
The post-Soviet Russia was going through an economic crisis that was not known to many in the West. Therefore, elites from the U.S.A. and Europe created a plan to extend NATO to Russia’s borders. This cynical move was openly ignored by the West and in violation of its pledge. In an Op-Ed in the New York Times, George Kennan, the international policy lion of most of the 20th Century, warned that this would lead to a “cynical” move.
Late 1996 was a time when it became common to believe that NATO had been expanded to Russia’s borders.
This is a matter of paramount importance. Perhaps it’s not too late to share a view that I believe is not just mine but also shared by others who have more recent and extensive experience in Russian matters. Simply stated, expanding NATO would be America’s most fatal error in post-cold war era policy.
One year later, May 1998, after a vote by U.S. Senate for NATO expansion, Kennan warned again the West’s policy elites in an interview. This was with Thomas Friedman, New York Times.
From his Princeton home, Mr. Kennan stated that he believes it was the beginning of a new Cold War. “I believe the Russians will eventually react quite negatively and it will impact their policies. It is a terrible mistake. This was completely unjustified. Nobody was threatening anyone else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers this country’s turn in their graves. Even though we don’t have the resources or the intent to do so, we signed up to defend a number of countries. “[NATO expansion] was a lighthearted decision by a Senate with no real interest foreign affairs.”
Kennan’s warnings weren’t heeded. In 1999, NATO launched military action against Serbia, a year after Kennan’s warnings were ignored. You can still see the effects of the bombings on Belgrade, Serbia’s capital.
Since the First World War, Serbia has been an ally to Russia. Russia saw this as a warning to NATO that it would do whatever it wanted and that anyone who opposed them could expect the same treatment. This insult was a calculated one that led to the rise and fall of a Russian nationalist leader. Vladimir Putin was elected president in 2000. The Russian leadership has been aware of the wars in America and NATO, as well as the destruction of other countries like Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and many countries in Central and South America.
Washington cannot be trusted to say that they weren’t warned about the consequences of their power-lust for expanding NATO. The lie goes on. Over the years, the top foreign policy officials who opposed the destructive interventions were silenced.
William Burns, Biden’s director of CIA (the agency that is charged with predicting how other countries will react and act) has been a key figure in Russian and NATO policy for over 30 years. Burns was a planner under Secretary of State James Baker during the 1990 period when Baker pledged to Russia that NATO would not expand beyond the borders of newly reunited Germany.
Burns’s history as an anointed Cardinal of the Deep State can be well documented. He is actually a bit of an inheritance. Burns’s father was a major in the Army and was involved in intelligence work. He also served Reagan and Bush I on Disarmament Councils. Burns himself was a Clinton appointee in 1995 when he wrote, while serving as counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, that “hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.”
In a 2008 report, Burns, then U.S. ambassador, to Bush II Secretary, Condoleezza Rice, stated that Ukraine’s entry into NATO was the most important of all redlines for Russia (not Putin). In over two and a quarter years of speaking with Russian officials, from the Kremlin’s darkest recesses to Putin’s most sharpest liberal critics to , I have yet found anyone who sees Ukraine joining NATO as a threat to Russian interests.
Although Biden’s CIA Director was unable to bring his vast experience to bear this past year, other State Department officials knew exactly how Russia would react to any open moves to include Ukraine in NATO membership. In 2013, Victoria Nuland (mandarin in the neocon ranks in the foreign policy establishment, State Department) called for $5 billion in order to assist factions in Ukraine in investigating and provoking Russia.
The United States supported, if you will, directed a coup against a Ukrainian government’s elected government. This was because the government wanted to have friendly relations with Russia, a bigger neighbor with a long history. This friendship was not acceptable by the Deep State. The famous leaked conversation between former U.S. Assistant Secretary Nuland, and then Assistant Secretary of State Nuland. Listen to Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discuss helping “midwife” the February 2014 revolution. University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer presented a 2015 lecture where he warned of the dangers and problems wrought by the 2014 U.S.-engineered Ukraine crisis.
After many attempts to stop Russia’s diplomatic efforts to endanger the NATO-armed Ukraine, Russia finally took action, as Kennan and Burns predicted. In 2014, the Russians moved to defend their southern border. Russia secured Crimea by supporting separatists speaking Russian. This was a peninsula that has been a key point for the Russian Navy for over 300 years. They went further? No. No. No. They did what they promised and moved to defend the nation’s southern border. Professor John Mearsheimer explained in a June 6th, 2022 lecture that there were many provocations from the U.S. and NATO prior to this.
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Many of these provocations are described in the 2019 Rand Corporation report Russia . The Rand Corporation, a Deep State think-tank, has been instrumental in most U.S. foreign intervention since 1948. The Rand report summary warns that you should not take military action to prevent it. Evidently, the braintrust of Nuland and Biden didn’t read this part. They have made Ukraine de facto a NATO member for years. It is a neutral country in name only. They have been poking the bear since the 2015 Minsk Treaty. How is that in America’s best interests?
The Extension Russia Rand Corporation report provides a detailed look at the Deep State’s intentions and plans toward Russia. This is a disturbing list of US intentional interference in sovereign countries in Russia’s vicinity to injure or provoke Russia. The U.S. policy seems to be to instigate hostilities between Russia and Ukraine at all costs. Why didn’t the leadership negotiate with Russia in good faith? They knew that the Russians would respond as they have. What did the U.S. policymakers want to gain?
These are the questions to be answered. Their antagonistic policies are to be held accountable for their death and destruction. While they can pretend that they don’t know what will happen, serious foreign policy experts who are not in the Washington bubble understand better.
