onparkstreet

Don’t Buy Any of It….

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From a comment I left at SWJ:

“Thank you for writing a piece that is thoughtful, rational and calm. How difficult it has been to find a calm voice.
 
The hysteria surrounding this tragic incident and the rush to politicize the incident by various stakeholders on all sides-Russian, Ukrainian, American, various militaries and NATO–is dishonest and dangerous.
 
I met someone who was on the Lockerbie flight, if only briefly. A favorite novelist of mine once wrote that a character who had just lost a child was “living the curious aftermath of a life.” What pain for the families, what they must be suffering.
 
Some days ago, I posted an article from June discussing the poor equipping and training of the Ukrainian border forces and how material was crossing the border. I had asked, “if this is a crisis of sovereignty, why is everyone so silent about this and discussing everything else?” And now I find this article:
 
From May 7:

The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine used Pentagon money to go shopping in Kiev for supplies, including concertina wire for Ukraine’s ill-equipped border guards, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
The Defense Department funds also bought fuel pumps, car batteries, spare parts, binoculars and communications gear for the guards, who would be the first line of defense if the 40,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders invaded.
 
Embassy personnel bought the goods locally in Kiev, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.
 
Warren did not have an initial cost estimate for the supplies, but Evelyn Farkas, a deputy assistant defense secretary, told Congress that the Defense Department has given Ukraine’s military and border guards a total of $18 million in non-lethal aid to date.
 
In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Farkas said that Ukraine’s requests for additional aid “vastly outstrips our abilities to meet them.”

 
Link
 
We spent how many BILLIONS on”democracy promotion” in Ukraine already? And now Americans struggling with a flat economy and uncertain economic prospects have to scrape together nickels and dimes for more when Ukraine is awash with wealthy oligarchs and Europe has a collective GDP that parallels the US?
 
So this is the great crisis that requires a new Cold War? I don’t buy any of it.
 
1. I don’t believe NATO – a bureaucracy fishing for funds and increased prominence after the Afghanistan drawdown.
2. I don’t believe hawkish Senators that are grandstanding for votes or who have emotional problems with buckling down and doing the nation’s work and prefer strange pseudo-ideologic crusades.
3. I don’t believe a President that is looking for a foreign policy win.
4. I don’t believe a Pentagon–or an Army–still looking to milk the American people for their own needs. Missiles in Poland! Oh, please.
5. I don’t believe ‘independent’ analysts–or their contractor and arms selling friends–bought and paid for.
6. I don’t buy the Michael McFaul, retired military Cold Warriors that look at the world through ideological lenses and think the world is a playground for regime change and democracy promotion.
7. I don’t buy the Special Forces hype that see everything as an unconventional war to be countered by training troops, regardless of the strategic wisdom of doing so.
8. I don’t buy the British Chatham House crew, the Polish right, the American transatlanticists and the NATOists that are only concerned with harnessing American power for their own personal or national or ideological or money-making reasons.
9. I don’t buy the middle aged nostalgics for the Cold War and the armchair warriors that view war as a game, an entertainment for boring everyday lives.
10. I don’t buy the neoconservatives who are trying to derail an Iran deal with the Ukraine crisis.
11. I don’t buy the State Department line. State has never gotten over the Cold War and thus its attitudes toward Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and Eastern European nations that it hasn’t helped on any level because they are still so dependent on outside funds.
 
Elements within Russia, the US, Ukraine, the EU/NATO “axis” are all grandstanding and maneuvering for their own selfish interests.
 
If anyone in the vaunted West really cared, the borders would have been the first thing worked on decades ago. And I don’t buy that it’s all just lack of funding. Oligarchs have money. They also like to bring in outside money from Russia and the West and pocket a bit of it and some people might not mind porous borders, if you get my drift. Which no one will because no one really cares.
 
I don’t trust people that talk about unconventional warfare and can’t even be bothered to vet the experts they cite, experts like Michael McFaul or Anne Applebaum. I don’t know if people are stupid, dishonest, ideologues, unwilling to think new thoughts, or what. But I don’t have to buy any of it.
 
Don’t start World War III, Washington Consensus, NATO, Russian hawks, and the rest of you. How will you be able to spend all those ill-gotten gains if you aren’t around for it to be spent?

A crisis of Sovereignty

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A comment I made elsewhere:

If Ukraine is a crisis of sovereignty, then how did the conversation switch to Putin-as-devil? Taking land is the worst of it, arms from outside the second worst of it, but early on, did our advice help or hurt the Ukrainians in asserting their sovereignty and creating a healthy state?
 
In the Council, a commenter from Estonia I believe, said something along the lines of, “we told them to control the borders and grab Russian passports.”
 
Ukrainian border patrol asked for help early on. Did they get it? The oligarchs that are in control raided the state and isn’t that partly why the border control doesn’t have the resources it needs? How did this issue of border control–and including ethnic Russians into the larger state order–become all about the US/NATO/EU and its battles with Russia?
 
I worry about the Ukrainians–look what internationalizing the issue did to the Kashmiris. Just because outsiders want to help, doesn’t mean that their help will actually work.
 
And how much of the NATO stuff is various constituencies using the crisis to get particular things, increasing budgets, directing the course of the EU. Some Eastern European nations are going to get big subsidies. What does this do to sovereignty and the ability to resist outside interference?

I’ve been looking up articles on Border control and its hard because after a certain time period it’s all either US/NATO/EU propaganda, Russian propaganda, or Ukrainian propaganda fed to journalists that seem to dutifully pass it on….

2008 statement on NATO expansion from then Senator Clinton:

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I enthusiastically welcome the January 11 letter from Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, and Verkhovna Rada Chairman Arsenii Yatsenyuk to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, which outlines Ukraine’s desire for a closer relationship with NATO, including a Membership Action Plan. Like Ukraine’s leaders, I hope that important steps toward reaching these goals will be made at the NATO summit in Bucharest in early April. I applaud the fact that Ukraine aspires to anchor itself firmly in the trans-Atlantic community through membership in NATO and look forward to working with Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Americans to reach that goal.
 
Since the earliest days of Ukrainian independence, the strategy of the United States has always been to respect and support the Ukrainian people’s democratic choices in shaping their future. Ukraine has been and remains an extremely important partner for the United States, and I take great pride in Ukraine’s contributions to our common goal of building a Europe that is whole and free, peaceful and prosperous.
 
When I traveled to Ukraine in 1997, I visited a memorial to the victims of Communist repression in Lviv, and made a commitment to the Ukrainian people on behalf of the United States: “In your fight for freedom, your fight for democracy, the American people will stand with you.” In recalling that commitment more than ten years later I applaud the immense contributions that Ukrainian-Americans have made to our country and the indispensable role they have played in broadening and deepening the bonds between the United States and Ukraine. I have been greatly impressed by the courage of the Ukrainian people as they emerged from decades of Soviet oppression and as they have experienced both victories and struggles on the path to democracy and freedom.
 
I have worked for more than 15 years to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and help improve the lives of Ukrainians. Even before my first visit to Kyiv in 1995, I supported health care programs for Ukraine, including partnerships between hospitals in the United States and Ukraine and airlifts of critical pharmaceuticals and other medical supplies. After hearing pleas from Ukrainian women in 1997 to help combat human trafficking, which had become a growing problem in Ukraine, I helped initiate an international effort to combat trafficking, including several programs specifically to help Ukraine. In 1996, I organized a 10th anniversary White House commemoration of the Chornobyl disaster and, as honorary chair of Chornobyl Challenge ’96, committed to continuing support for humanitarian efforts on behalf of those who suffer severe health consequences from the tragedy. I was honored to receive the Children of Chornobyl’s Relief Fund Lifetime Humanitarian Achievement Award in 1999 for my work in helping to improve the health of women and children in Ukraine. As Senator I traveled to Ukraine in 2005 and met with President Yushchenko and offered the U.S. government’s support for reform efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s democracy.
 
The United States has always favored the closest possible ties between NATO and Ukraine, including the creation of the NATO-Ukraine Council. We have always insisted on an open door policy for European democracies that want to join the Alliance. The enlargement of NATO is not directed against any state; NATO does not see any nation as its enemy. I pledge to support Ukraine’s efforts to meet the criteria for MAP and eventual membership. The United States should actively encourage our NATO Allies to deepen their own ties with Ukraine, a country that has broken with an authoritarian past and pursues good relations with all its neighbors. Ukraine deserves a chance to pursue its aspirations for a wider role in the Euro-Atlantic community. In the same spirit, I call on the Bush Administration to give Ukraine all the support it needs to complete its accession to the World Trade Organization.
 
As President, I will ensure that the United States does everything necessary to help Ukraine realize these important and achievable goals.

– Hillary Clinton

Statement from Senator Hillary Clinton on Ukrainian Membership in NATO
January 28, 2008 (From The American Presidency Project)

NATO expansion and ’90s era analysis

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I found the following on NATO expansion at Fas.org:

Russia is the main opponent to this expansion, because it interprets this as an increasing military presence on its borders. There is also a concern over old territorial claims to parts of Russia’s new neighbors that Moscow may try to pursue subsequently. For example, one vague scenario is of Russian intervention in the Eastern Ukraine to “protect the lives and property of Russian citizens”. Despite this, there has been a detectable thaw in Moscow’s opposition to NATO expansion as its leadership recognizes that the alliance no longer poses a threat to Russia, and this should be a manageable concern. For example, Russian Defense Minister Igor Rodionov recently stated the following: “I have become convinced NATO is not a threat to Russia, but I have millions to convince in Russia who are still worried that it is a threat.”(2)

United States Marine Corps
Command and Staff College
Marine Corps University
2076 South Street
Marine Corps Combat Development Command
Quantico, Virginia 22134-5068
MASTER OF MILITARY STUDIES
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF MILITARY STUDIES
Author:
Captain Gyula Bene, Hungarian Army
AY: 1996-97

If NATO expansion had occurred in a different way, one without the stripping of the Russian economy, aggressive democracy promotion as regime change, Iraq and Libya and a “global” NATO diluting its capabilities, what then?

Update: Great comments by all. In case it wasn’t clear from my series of posts, I agree with commenter dearieme: “But what would be the point of expanding NATO? It’s job was done. Declare victory and dissolve it: replace it by some low-key organisation that doesn’t worry the bear. And, above all, don’t, don’t, don’t interfere in places like Georgia.” In this post I was trying to point out that even if one thought NATO necessary, the nature of its expansion hollowed it out. But I think the US has to start thinking in a very different way about our security. We are not well-served by our foreign policy elite.

Letter to the Editor from 2008 (Monday, May 12, The Washington Post)

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I didn’t find Robert Kagan persuasive when he said that what Vladimir Putin, now Russian’s prime minister, has to fear from NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia is only democracy, not a military threat [“Ideology’s Rude Return,” op-ed, May 2]. Mr. Kagan echoed President Bush on the subject in writing, “NATO is less provocative and threatening toward Moscow today than it was in [Mikhail] Gorbachev’s time.”
 
Both columnist and president are wrong. Mr. Putin sees the world around his immediate frontiers in a strategic sense of military options. NATO forces are in his face from Murmansk to the Baltic states, Romania and Turkey. Kyrgyzstan, while not in NATO, is certainly an American client with its large U.S. military airfield and staging area at Manas, near the capital. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have pledged to the U.S. various forms of direct military cooperation.
 
Think about Mr. Putin’s reduced military options in backing up Russian policy if Ukraine and Georgia join NATO. Mr. Putin could not be clearer on this point: Russia will not tolerate further NATO expansion eastward. He has stated that to any media outlet that will listen. He has shown his seriousness on this point with stepped-up Cold War-style flights by his Tu-95 Bear bombers over our ships at sea and near Alaska and Great Britain.
 
We risk a major confrontation by disregarding Mr. Putin’s “red line” on this subject.

– Jack Broadbent

I’ve been digging through Congressional testimony, op-eds, letters to the editors and so on from the ’90s to the present. The number of warnings is amazing. Everyone from Phyllis Schafly to the late Senator Wellstone.

Note, recognizing the complicated multifactorial nature of the current Ukraine crisis is not the same as being an apologist. We have a form of unconventional warfare being practiced on the Ukraine by Russia; and we have a complicated form of political warfare being practiced in the Ukraine by the US, UK, EU and so on. The whole-of-it matters for understanding.