NATO’s War in Ukraine · Storyflo

I published the following article in a Norwegian newspaper in February 2023, on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. My argument is that the war will continue until an agreement can be reached on the European security architecture: Natos krig | Klassekampen

We are constantly told that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked and motivated solely by the desire to annex territory. The conclusion, therefore, is that Moscow cannot be negotiated with and that NATO’s role in the war is solely to help Ukraine defend itself. With such a narrative, we are convinced that there is only a military solution and that Norway therefore had to abandon its tradition of refraining from sending Norwegian weapons to war zones.

But if NATO provoked the war and sabotaged all attempts at peace, then the weapons shipments must be interpreted as a cynical use of Ukrainians in a Cold War against Russia. Acknowledging NATO’s involvement in this war is necessary to begin negotiations, and it should not be equated with supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 1990, we established a new, inclusive Europe with the “Charter of Paris for a New Europe.” The agreement was based on “indivisible security” and “sovereign equality” in a Europe without dividing lines. Four years later, we developed a common security institution with Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), based on the same principles.

The decision to expand NATO resulted in the principles of these agreements being abandoned. Instead of “indivisible security,” NATO increased its own security at the expense of Russian security. Instead of a Europe without dividing lines, we are fighting a new Cold War over where the new dividing lines should be drawn. Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and Moldova are therefore the new front line.

In 1994, even President Clinton warned that NATO expansion could destabilize Europe, as drawing a new line between East and West could create a self-fulfilling prophecy of future confrontation. When Clinton changed his mind, his Secretary of Defense, William Perry, considered resigning in protest. Perry claims that those pushing for NATO expansion acknowledged that it would destroy peace with Russia, but did not believe it mattered because Russia was weak, and their attitude was essentially: “Who cares what they think?”

Jack Matlock, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union who participated in negotiations to end the Cold War, condemned NATO expansionism as a betrayal of Russia that destroyed the foundation for lasting peace. George Kennan, the architect of the containment policy toward the Soviet Union, predicted that NATO expansionism was a provocation that would start a new Cold War, and that if Russia responded to the provocations, NATO would wrongly place all the blame on Russia.

Bringing Ukraine onto our side of the new dividing lines in Europe was a recipe for war. William Burns, the U.S. ambassador to Russia and now CIA director, warned in 2008 that bringing Ukraine into NATO could trigger a civil war and that Russia would likely intervene on behalf of eastern Ukraine, something Moscow did not want to have to do. Angela Merkel agreed with this assessment when she argued that giving Ukraine a Membership Action Plan to join NATO would be interpreted by Moscow as “a declaration of war”.

But NATO continued pushing Ukrainians toward membership they did not want. In 2011, NATO published a report arguing that the greatest challenge in its relationship with Ukraine was that NATO membership was highly unpopular, with some opinion polls showing less than 20 percent support among the population. In 2014, NATO supported a “democratic revolution” that did not have majority support among Ukrainians and that violated the constitution.

Leaked phone calls revealed that the United States had handpicked the new administration several weeks before helping remove the democratically elected president from power.

The civil war predictably began after the coup, and Russia intervened. The conflict appeared to be resolved in February 2015 with the Minsk Agreement, to which all parties—including the West—committed themselves. We have since learned that the United States and Britain sabotaged the peace agreement for seven years, and both Germany and France now claim that the agreement was only created to buy time to arm “their” Ukraine.

In 2019, Zelensky was elected with 73 percent of the vote on a peace platform, promising to implement the Minsk Agreement in order to achieve peace with Donbas and Russia. But he made a complete U-turn after nationalists funded and trained by the United States threatened to kill him.

In 2021, Moscow attempted to negotiate with NATO to stop the increased American presence along its borders, including NATO’s modernization of two Ukrainian ports so that they could be used by American warships. The former head of Russia analysis at the CIA argued in December 2021 that Russia could invade because “the risk of inaction” had become too great.

Russia invaded in February 2022 to establish a new status quo in Ukraine after eight years of war in Donbas and NATO’s gradual buildup of the Ukrainian military.

Three days into the invasion, negotiations had already begun. Israeli Prime Minister Bennett mediated in the negotiations and claims that both Russia and Ukraine wanted an agreement under which Ukraine would stay out of NATO in exchange for Russia withdrawing its forces. But according to Bennett, the United States and Britain sabotaged the peace agreement because they wanted to use the Ukrainian army they had built against Russia. Turkey’s Foreign Minister also confirmed the two parties came close to an agreement involving Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for a Russian withdrawal. But according to Turkey and the former head of the German Armed Forces, the peace agreement was again sabotaged by the United States and Britain, which wanted to wage war against Russia using Ukrainians. The strategy of provoking greater Russian involvement in Ukraine was one of the recommendations in a 2019 RAND report, commissioned by the U.S. military, on how Russia could be weakened.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense declared that the goal of the war was to weaken Russia. Senator Mitch McConnell confirmed that “cold, hard, practical American interests” were the reason for weakening and defeating Russia. Senator Lindsey Graham explained that the United States has a good deal because it sends weapons while Zelensky promises that “they will fight to the last person.”

If this was an unprovoked and opportunistic invasion, weapons shipments could cause Russia to withdraw because the costs would become greater than the benefits. But if Russia considers NATO an existential threat, weapons shipments will only escalate the conflict toward nuclear war. Instead of using Ukraine as a pawn in the new Cold War, we should support negotiations that provide the security guarantees Moscow demanded a year ago, based on existing agreements from the 1990s that we abandoned.

https://klassekampen.no/artikkel/2023-02-23/natos-krig?

NATO’s War in Ukraine · Storyflo