Contra Cold War Redux: 8. The Blundering Generation
I see another ‘blundering generation’ of Ukrainians & Americans, convinced that continually confronting the Russians is 'Churchillian' and that compromising with them would be 'Chamberlainian.'
‘Ukraine is holding the line against Russia, not just for us, but for the West. And where does the US deploy its Patriot Missiles? The closest ones are in Poland. They should be here.’—Andriy Yermak (Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine) in an interview with Time Magazine, April 9th 2021
‘The Americans wield a dominating influence on Zelensky and his team, and in the grand scheme of things, if the Americans should wish it and if the Americans are genuinely prepared to support the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, this issue could be settled very quickly.’—Sergei Lavrov (Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation), Interfax, October 19 2021 (link requires VPN due to Western blackout of Russian websites)
‘We see the threat of Ukraine becoming ever more integrated in NATO without even acquiring a formal status of a NATO member state. This is something that goes right to the center of Russia’s national security interests, and we will do our utmost to reverse this situation.’—Sergei Ryabkov (Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia), AP News
‘So if the Kremlin’s aim is to have less NATO on Russia’s borders, it will only get more NATO, and if it wants to divide NATO, it will only get an even more united alliance.’—NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg at the Munich Security Conference, February 19th 2022
In the history of the American Civil War, which is my area of amateur expertise, with each new generation there is a new narrative of the war—what caused it, how it was conducted, what it caused, &c.
Originally, when the blood had not yet dried and the fires had not yet died, the narratives of Northern and Southern historians (many of whom were direct participants in the events) were openly partisan and apologetical. For the victorious Unionists the narrative was ‘The Just Cause,’ whilst for the vanquished Confederates the narrative was ‘The Lost Cause.’ I also call these the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ narratives, respectively.
The historical narrative of the next generation was ‘The Great Compromise.’ According to this narrative, which enabled the national reunification of these United States of America, Southerners conceded that it was good that the Union was ultimately not divided and Northerners conceded that Southerners fought with honour for a cause which at the time was still an open question.
‘The Great Compromise,’ which enjoyed a renaissance around the centennial anniversary of the war, was predominant throughout the 20th century. ‘The Great Compromise’ has influenced most of the popular historians of the war, such as Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, and Ken Burns, as well as the most influential historian in my life, my grandfather.1
The perfect thousand-word images of this narrative are those of Union and Confederate veterans shaking hands at battlefield reunions during the semi-centennial anniversary of the war, which comprised the closing footage of Mr. Burns’ PBS miniseries.
Historians like Charles and Mary Beard, in the context of the Populist and Progressive movements, thought that the war was all about political economy. Historians like Eric Foner, in the context of the Civil-Rights Revolution, think that the war was all about race. In recent generations, some historians have espoused a neo-‘Just Cause’ narrative with an especial emphasis on debunking the ‘myths’ of the ‘Lost Cause.’2
The narrative of the latest generation is what I call the ‘woke-nationalist’ one, which updates the old-fashioned American nationalism of the ‘Just Cause’ (wherein ‘anti-negro slavery’ was oftentimes synonymous with ‘anti-slave’ and/or ‘anti-negro’).3 ‘The 1619 Project’ of The New York Times4 and ‘the 1619 Riots’ of the summer of 20205 were expressions of this narrative. The perfect thousand-word image of this narrative is the vandalism and demolition of ‘Freedmen’s Monuments’ for presenting Abraham Lincoln as a paternalistic figure (which, of course, he was, hence the African-American appellation ‘Father Abraham,’ but that is politically incorrect to acknowledge nowadays and thus the memory of it must be erased).
There is something to be learned from each of these narratives, even the woke-nationalist one. Indeed, in spite of its obvious defects and excesses,6 it has made me better understand that whilst white Americans like me remember the war as an epic-yet-tragic ‘American Iliad,’ for black Americans the memory of the war is more of an ‘American Exodus.’ As the historian John Lukacs argued, in history what we remember as having happened is as important as what is recorded as having happened. In other words, in history, there is the one truth of what actually happened, the objective to which all historians should aspire, as well as the many truths of the different points of view of what happened, to which all historians are subject.
Few of these narratives, it must be understood, are based on the discovery of new information resulting in new interpretations. Rather, they are new interpretations of the same information based on the historical context of that generation. History is inherently revisionist; each generation writes its own narrative, thereby ‘rewriting history.’ The finest historians are the ones who are most self-aware of their prejudices/biases and strive to balance natural subjectivity with the ideal of objectivity.
One constant theme in all of these historical narratives is the idea of ‘The Irrepressible Conflict,’ that is, that the North and the South were doomed to fight for whatever reason, whether over anti-slavery versus pro-slavery, Union versus States’ rights, industrialism versus agrarianism, ‘Puritans/Saxons’ versus ‘Cavaliers/Normans,’ &c. It is an example of what Alexis de Tocqueville, the French proto-sociologist and political scientist, observed in ‘Some Characteristics of Historians in Democratic Times,’ a short chapter from his philosophical travelogue Democracy in America.
Whilst historians in aristocratic ages ‘trace out the smallest causes with sagacity, and often leave the greatest causes unperceived,’ historians in democratic ages ‘assign great general causes to all petty incidents.’ The problem is not just that democratic historians may be biased in favour of the general and against the exceptional (as their predecessors were biased in favour of the exceptional against the general), but that democratic historical determinism could lead to fatalism and undermine free will. ‘A cause sufficiently extensive to affect millions of men at the same time easily seems as if it were irresistible,’ and thus for democratic historians ‘it is not enough to show what events have occurred; they wish to show that events could not have occurred otherwise.’ As de Tocqueville put it, ‘M. de Lafayette says somewhere in his Memoirs that there exaggerated proposition of general causes affords surprising consolations to mediocre statesmen. I will add that the effects are no less consolatory to mediocre historians: It can always furnish a few powerful reasons to extricate them from the most difficult part of their work, and it indulges the indolence or incapacity of their minds while it confers upon them the honors of deep thinking.’
There was, however, a narrative in the 1920s and 1930s—known then as the ‘Revisionists’—which held that the conflict was, in fact, repressible. These historians, such as Avery O. Craven, Charles W. Ramsdell, and James G. Randall, argued that it was a ‘Blundering Generation’ of pro- and anti-slavery disunionists which, by failing to do what had traditionally preserved the Union—compromise—caused the war. That is, according to the Revisionists, all of the good that came of the war (like the abolition of slavery) could have come about otherwise, and all of the bad that came of the war (like the hundreds of thousands of American lives lost and the generations of whites and blacks in the American South ‘punished by poverty’) could have been avoided altogether. The historical context of the Revisionists was the First World War, when another uncompromising generation foolhardily ‘sleepwalked’ into the worst possible and entirely avoidable outcome. Today, Michael F. Holt (author of The Political Crisis of the 1850s, Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln, and The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War), is the foremost historian descended from the ‘Blundering Generation’ narrative.
I see another ‘blundering generation’ of Ukrainians and Americans, convinced that continually confronting the Russians is ‘Churchillian’ and that compromising with them would be ‘Chamberlainian.’ Although this blundering goes as far back as the end of the Cold War in 1991, I believe that a series of blunders in the past year comprised the causa efficiens of this war.
In 2021, after the inauguration of Joe Biden as US president, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky banned three Russian-language media networks popular among Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the political opposition and which were owned by the opposition politician Taras Kozak. Pres. Zelensky also sanctioned the leader of the opposition party, Viktor Medvedchuk, for allegedly financing terrorism (meaning the Ukrainian separatists in Donbas labeled ‘terrorists’ by the nationalists in Kiev), and nationalised Mr. Medvedchuk’s businesses.
Prior to the Russian-language media ban, Pres. Zelensky’s approval ratings had sunk so low that some polls showed that Mr. Medvedchuk was more popular than he was. Pres. Zelensky’s national security adviser, Oleksandr Danyliuk, in an interview with Time Magazine, stated that the ban was ‘conceived as a welcome gift to the Biden Administration’ and ‘calculated to fit in with the US agenda.’ Accordingly, the Biden-Harris administration, through the American mission to the OSCE and the American embassy in Kiev, applauded Pres. Zelensky’s authoritarian and illiberal actions ‘to counter Russia's malign influence’ and ‘to prevent disinformation from being used as a weapon in an info war against sovereign states.’
Despite such eager ‘welcome gifts,’ as late as April Pres. Biden had still not even spoken to Pres. Zelensky, apparently in an attempt to further pressure this would-be/one-time peacemaker ‘to fit in with the US agenda.’ Pres. Biden’s Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense had both spoken with their Ukrainian counterparts, but Pres. Biden, despite having spoken with dozens of friendly and unfriendly world leaders, had notably omitted Pres. Zelensky. ‘There is merit to having Zelensky sit and wait his turn for a call,’ stated an unnamed official from the Biden-Harris administration interviewed by Politico (‘Biden Keeping Ukraine at Arm’s Length’), adding that ‘he is not struggling with all his might to fight corruption’ and that ‘pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine have gained immense power since Zelensky took over.’ According to this unnamed official, ‘There needs to be tough love with Zelensky when that one-on-one conversation does happen.’
The Washington Post, that weathervane of bien-pensant opinion, suggested that Pres. Zelensky could prove himself to the Americans by taking even more extreme measures against pro-Russia Ukrainians and to alienate Ukraine from Russia. ‘Mr. Zelensky has an opportunity to forge a partnership with Mr. Biden that could decisively advance Ukraine’s attempt to break free from Russia and join the democratic West,’ stated the editors. ‘He should seize on it.’ As peculiar of an editorial position as it may be for the ‘free press’ with the motto ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ to endorse the undemocratic repression of political opposition, such are the current contradictions of Janus-faced liberal imperialism at home and abroad. Shortly after getting his first phone call from Pres. Biden, Pres. Zelensky ordered the arrest of Messrs. Medvedchuk and Kozak for treason (that is, allegedly doing business with Russians in Crimea).
In February, on the sixth anniversary of Minsk II, Russia called a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the peace plan’s lack of progress. ‘Over those six years, we still haven’t gotten an answer to two very important questions: How exactly does Ukraine intend to peacefully resolve the conflict, and how does Kiev envisage special status of Donbass within Ukraine?’ asked Russian UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya. ‘The answers to those questions will entirely determine any prospects for a settlement because after the beginning in 2014 of Kiev’s use of force and the ongoing shellings of residential areas by the Ukrainian army, which continue to this day, the people of Donbass have not felt any connection with Ukraine.’ Russia blamed Ukraine for not complying with Minsk II and Ukraine’s Western allies for not compelling their ally to comply with Minsk II, but according to the German UN ambassador, it was Russia which was to blame for the failure of Minsk II. ‘Until today, there are Russian forces in eastern Ukraine,’ he stated. ‘They may not have the official stamp of the Russian army, but the Russians continue to be there, and without Russia, Luhansk and Donetsk could not survive.’
On the eighth anniversary of Crimea’s (re-)annexation by Russia, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council announced a plan to re-re-annex Crimea.7 ‘The signal is clear,’ stated Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. ‘We don’t just call on the world to help us return Crimea, Ukraine makes its own dedicated and systemic efforts under President Zelensky’s leadership.’
Pres. Zelensky himself announced the creation of the ‘Crimean Platform Initiative,’ which despite his foreign minister’s claims about making their own efforts was, in fact, a call on the world to return Crimea to Ukraine: ‘A new consultative and coordination format initiated by Ukraine to improve the efficiency of the international response to the occupation of Crimea, respond to growing security challenges, step up further international pressure on Russia, prevent further human-rights violations, protect victims of the occupying power, and to achieve the de-occupation of Crimea and its return to Ukraine.’ The EU, UK, Canada, and Turkey were the first to join Ukraine’s initiative. ‘All efforts by Kiev to reclaim Crimea are illegitimate and cannot be interpreted in any other way but a threat of aggression,’ stated Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. ‘We reiterate that we will consider participation of any states or organizations in such activities, including the Crimean Platform Initiative, as a hostile act against Russia and direct encroachment on its territorial integrity.’
In the spring of 2021, Russia commenced a troop build-up on the southern and eastern borders of Ukraine, citing Ukrainian threats against Crimea and an increase in Ukrainian ceasefire violations in Donbas. Ukraine, in turn, blamed the ceasefire violations on Russia and accelerated its aspirations for NATO membership.
After a summit of the Strategic Ukrainian-Turkish Council in Ankara, Turkey, Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced with Pres. Zelensky his categorical support for his ally’s NATO aspirations, as well as for his ally’s aspiration to re-occupy Crimea and Donbas. Earlier, Turkey and Ukraine had met at Ankara in the ‘Quadriga Format’ (the two foreign ministers and two defense ministers of each country) where they pledged to support each other in ‘resolving conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Caucasus’ (that is, Turkey’s conflicts with the Kurds in Syria, the Greeks in Cyprus, and the Armenians in Artsakh). Turkey (which is NATO’s second-largest member in terms of the size of its population and the size of its military) and Ukraine (which has the second-largest military in Europe after Russia) have thus emerged as an ultra-nationalist alliance united against the human right of self-determination within their spheres of influence.8
Ukraine entered into an energy and arms economic partnership with Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, connecting to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline in order to end its Russian energy dependence. Ukraine partnered with Turkey to co-produce state-of-the-art drones to deploy against the LDNR. (These are the ‘Bayraktar’ drones deployed to such devastating effect in the fall of 2020 in Azerbaijan’s war with Armenia over the separatist and unrecognised territory of Nagorno-Karabakh,9 which Pres. Zelensky has praised as a precedent for Ukraine’s reoccupation of Crimea and Donbas).10 ‘We strongly recommend that all responsible nations which we are in contact with, among them Turkey, that they analyse the situation, the never-ending militaristic statements by the regime in Kiev,’ stated Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. ‘We warn them against feeding these militaristic sentiments.’
In response to the Russian troop build-up, Ukrainian foreign minister Mr. Kuleba traveled to Brussels, Belgium (where NATO and the EU are headquartered), for an emergency session of the Ukraine-NATO Commission and to attend the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council. Officials from the Biden-Harris administration, such as Secretary State of Antony Blinken, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin all made pilgrimages to Ukraine to assure Pres. Zelensky in person that Ukraine would sooner or later join NATO.
Pres. Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials then threatened that unless Ukraine were admitted into NATO sooner rather than later its only alternatives would be nuclear weapons or World War III. (An example of this melodramatic rhetoric from the Ukrainian foreign ministry on Victory Day: ‘Ukraine today defends Europe, which emerged on ruins of World War II.’) Pres. Zelensky traveled to Warsaw, Poland, to meet with fellow heads of state from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, who issued a statement of solidarity against Russia and Belarus as well as an endorsement of Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership.
In addition to proclaiming its ‘unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’—this phrase is intoned homogenously and monotonously by officials and spokespersons—the Biden-Harris administration added to the already $2.5 billion in military aid that the U.S. of A. had sent to Ukraine with another $125 million, $60 million, and more.
One of the most absurd blunders came during the summer, when the U.S. of A. and Ukraine co-hosted ‘Operation Sea Breeze,’ a 2-week, 30-member NATO wargame on the Black Sea. According to Col. Brittany Stewart (defense attaché at the US embassy in Ukraine), ‘Exercise Sea Breeze is a tangible example of how the United States stands beside Ukraine on the front lines of Russian aggression.’
By ‘front lines,’ might you have meant ‘borders,’ Col. Stewart? Of the six countries on the Black Sea—Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine—only one, Russia, is not a NATO member or candidate-member. NATO conducted wargames in the Black Sea, right on Russia’s maritime border, yet has the audacity to accuse Russia of aggression!
Imagine, if you will, the American indignation if Russia conducted wargames with, say, Cuba and Venezuela, in the Gulf of Mexico, and then had the audacity to accuse the U.S. of A. of ‘aggression’ every time we left our ports and got too close to one of their ships! When, oh when, will we Yanks learn that God has not made us exceptions to the rules and that we must treat other countries the way that we want to be treated?11
That same summer, the U.S. of A. also led ‘Three Swords,’ a two-week wargame with the members of the ‘Lublin Triangle Alliance’ (Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania) targeting the Russian ally of Belarus, the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, and the Russian-backed LDNR. The foreign ministers of the Lublin Triangle met in Vilnius, Lithuania, and adopted two documents, ‘Roadmap for Further Cooperation’ and ‘Declaration on European Heritage and Common Values,’ pledging to oppose Russian occupation of separatist territories in Ukraine, to oppose Russian naval activity in the Black Sea, to oppose the Russian ‘Nord Stream 2’ pipeline, and to support regime change in Belarus.
‘Today we signed and adopted important documents of the Lublin Triangle,’ announced Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. ‘They reflect our common European past, our common response to modern challenges, and a common future for Ukraine in the EU and NATO, together with Poland and Lithuania.’ According to Mr. Kuleba, the Lublin Triangle was ‘strengthening, being filled with practical mechanisms of interaction, and gaining new importance,’ and, he added, ‘We offer an alternative to the “Russian world” in our region.’
The 2021 NATO Summit was held in Brussels on 14 June. The main debate among the various heads of state and other officials was whether China should be deemed an enemy of NATO as is Russia, with the conclusion that whilst Russia’s ‘aggressive actions constitute a threat to Euro-Atlantic security,’ NATO should ‘engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the Alliance.’ As the US chargé d’affaires at NATO told the European press, China is a ‘new threat,’ but Russia is ‘the most immediate threat.’ (Or, as Rick Rozoff colorfully phrased it at his ‘Anti-Bellum’ blog, ‘Though China comes in for its share of chastisement from the unelected imperial proconsul, procurator, and pontifex maximus of the planet, it will have to wait its turn before Russia and Belarus are given their quietus.’)
Pres. Biden’s speech at summit stressed NATO’s nature as a military bloc and left the impression that the world was on the brink of war. ‘The United States’ commitment to our NATO alliance and Article 5 is rock solid,’ he stated. ‘It’s a sacred obligation that we have under Article 5.’ (Article 5 is NATO’s mutual military assistance provision, which states that ‘an attack on one is an attack on all and will be met with a collective response.’)
Although leaders like Pres. Biden claim that NATO is keeping the peace in the world, the fact is that there is no greater threat to world peace (in an age of nuclear weapons) than a military bloc of 30 members and 40 other partners active on all 6 inhabited continents bound to go to war (even against other nuclear powers) in defence of any one of its members (especially considering the untrustworthiness and aggressiveness of certain members whose name rhymes with ‘jerky’). Did Western civilisation learn nothing from the First World War, which we blundered into practically by accident through a tangle of tripwires which, in theory, should have deterred the outbreak of conflict, but which, in practice, effectively escalated the outbreak of conflict? Forget the ominous aphorism about those who fail to learn from history being doomed to repeat history: Another world war will be far worse than a mere repetition of either of its predecessors.
‘A hula-hooping girl in the background of the poster did offer little as to what NATO is protecting its members against more than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,’ commented Bas Spliet, a Belgian journalist and student.
Of course, one of the items on the agenda of the NATO Summit was Georgia’s and Ukraine's membership statuses, the discussion of which was summarised respectively in points 68 and 69 of the post-summit communiqué. The previous year, both were upgraded to the status of ‘Enhanced Opportunities Partner,’ thereby advancing the operational integration their militaries and allowing for the cooperation of their militaries. (Translation: Georgia and Ukraine must purchase more weapons from the American military-industrial complex.) ‘We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance,’ intoned NATO (with identical language for Georgia). ‘We reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions.’
Russia’s protests that the expansion of an anti-Russia military bloc into two states on its border with which it is currently in conflict violates the post-Cold War principle of ‘indivisibility of security’ (that the security of each state in a region is inseparable from the security of every other state in that region and one state cannot advance its security at the expense of another state) were responded to with dismissive truisms. ‘We stand firm in our support for Ukraine’s right to decide its own future and foreign policy course free from outside interference,’ intoned NATO.
In addition to ‘combating corruption, promoting an inclusive political process, and decentralisation reform, based on democratic values, respect for human rights, minorities, and the rule of law,’ NATO informed Ukraine that ‘further reforms in the security sector’ (e.g. buying more weapons from Raytheon, etc.) were preconditions for membership. NATO thanked Ukraine for its cooperation with NATO’s military activities in the Black Sea against Russia and praised Ukraine’s participation in the Lublin Alliance’s ‘Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade’ that serves as an auxiliary NATO force against Russia.
Secretary-General Stoltenberg summarised the NATO Summit’s proceedings at a subsequent press conference. ‘Our relationship with Russia is at its lowest point since the Cold War,’ according to him, ‘and Moscow's aggressive actions are a threat to our security.’ (A parallel statement from Russian foreign minister Mr. Lavrov: ‘During the Cold War, the tensions were flying high, and risky crisis situations often emerged, but there was also a mutual respect. It seems to me there is a deficit of that now.’) Sec.-Gen. Stoltenberg also addressed the admission of Ukraine and Georgia. ‘We stand in solidarity with our valued partners Ukraine and Georgia,’ according to him, ‘and will continue to support their reforms, bringing them closer to NATO.’
In an online address prior to the 2021 NATO Summit co-sponsored by the elite think tanks of the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary-General Stoltenberg was asked a question about Turkey’s role in NATO.12
‘You can just look at the map and realize the importance of these lands, the landmass of Turkey…the only NATO ally that borders Iraq and Syria,’ answered Sec.-Gen. Stoltenberg, who added that ‘we continue to work closely with the NATO ally, Turkey, in stabilizing our southern neighborhood.’ Stabilising like the Mafia stabilises a neighborhood, perhaps…
Sec.-Gen. Stoltenberg’s answer was consistent with NATO’s official communiqué: ‘We reiterate our appreciation to our ally Turkey for hosting millions of Syrian refugees.’ Turkey’s hosting of ‘Syrian refugees’ (who are, in fact, just migrants from the Middle East and North Africa) consists of holding them in border camps and periodically threatening to release them into the European Union in order to compel Western appeasement of Turkish revanchism. The fact that NATO’s Secretary-General describes Turkey’s adventurism in Syria and Libya as merely ‘stabilizing our southern neighborhood,’ and that NATO’s own communiqué describes Turkey’s weaponisation of Arab and African refugees as ‘hosting millions of Syrian refugees,’ says more about NATO than any and all of its platitudes about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Ye shall know them by their fruits…
After the summit in the latter part of 2021, the ‘US-Ukraine Strategic Defense Framework’ and the ‘US-Ukrainian Charter on Strategic Partnership’ declared the further integration and cooperation of Ukraine’s military with NATO, and demanded an end to Russian ‘aggression’ in the Black Sea and the Russian ‘occupation’ of Crimea. That summer, Ukraine also hosted its first ‘Crimea Platform’ summit, which included representatives from all 30 NATO members and issued a joint declaration stating that the representatives ‘do not recognize and continue to condemn the temporary occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea, which constitutes a direct challenge to international security with grave implications for the international legal order that protects the territorial integrity, unity, and sovereignty of all states.’
In an interview on Rossiya-24 prior to the NATO Summit (which you will need to read using a VPN because of the Western blackout on Russian media), Pres. Putin explained the history of NATO expansion and why he was against it.
Pres. Putin noted that first two rounds of NATO expansion, in 1997 and 2004, occurred in spite of Russia’s opposition even when relations between with the West were better than they were in the last three rounds of expansion in 2009, 2017, and 2020. ‘Mind you, it was when there was neither the Crimea issue, nor any events after the state coup in Ukraine, when relations between Russia and the collective West were quite satisfactory, if not partner-like in the direct, good sense of the world, but all of our concerns were ignored,’ he stated. ‘All the preliminary agreements (although they were verbal, with Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev—thank God he is in good health—you can ask him and he will definitely confirm it), they were sent into oblivion by the West.’ ‘I do not want to use harsh words, but they simply spat upon our interests and that's that,’ he stated. ‘What does that mean? It means they put their geopolitical interests above the interests of other nations, regardless even of the nature of their relations with those countries.’
Although Pres. Putin acknowledged that many Russians were sceptical that Ukraine would ever join NATO and were ‘chuckling a little’ at the ‘idle talk’ of Pres. Zelensky, ‘I am of a different opinion,’ and he underlined NATO’s record of refusing to recognise Russia’s interests and insisting on Ukraine’s right to membership. The risk of ‘NATO’s enlargement and the advancement of NATO infrastructure towards Russia’s borders’ was, according to Pres. Putin, ‘a matter of paramount significance’ to Russia’s national security. Pres. Putin emphasised that American missiles installed in the NATO members Poland and Romania could strike Moscow within 15 minutes. ‘Let’s imagine that Ukraine becomes a NATO member,’ he explained. ‘The flight time from, let’s say, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk, to central Russia, to Moscow, will shrink 7-10 minutes. Is it a redline or not?’ The position of American missiles in Poland and Romania would, according to him, be comparable to the position of Russian missiles in Cuba, where they could strike Washington D.C. within 15 minutes. ‘To lower this flight time to 7-10 minutes, we should station our missiles on Canada’s southern border or Mexico’s northern border,’ he claimed. ‘Is this a red line for the US or not? Somebody should think about what our reaction should be to what is essentially being proposed and discussed.’
In the fall of 2021, Ukraine and Russia entered the final stage prior to the recent war. Once again, both sides blamed each other for the escalation—Ukraine pointed to the continuous Russian troop build-up on its border whilst Russia pointed to Ukraine’s continued joint military exercises with NATO on its border.
On 1 September, Pres. Zelensky met with Pres. Biden in Washington D.C. for the very first time. Pres. Zelensky stated that he ‘would like to discuss with President Biden here his vision, his government’s vision of Ukraine’s chances to join NATO and the timeframe for this accession.’ Pres. Biden, in reply, denounced ‘Russian aggression,’ proclaimed the USA’s support for ‘Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ and welcomed ‘Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations…being completely integrated in Europe.’ De rigueur…
Although there was no breakthrough, there was a potential turning point after a meeting between Pres. Biden and Pres. Putin in early December. Pres. Biden announced that deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine to combat Russia was ‘not on the table.’ ‘We have a moral obligation and a legal obligation to our NATO allies if they were to attack under Article 5, it’s a sacred obligation,’ stated Pres. Biden. ‘That obligation does not extend to Ukraine.’ Afterwards, American officials reportedly told their Ukrainian counterparts that NATO membership was unlikely for at least a decade and suggested that they should grant autonomy to Donbas as they agreed to do in Minsk II.
To return to the analogy of the ‘Blundering Generation’ this hopeful moment was comparable to the ‘Crittenden Compromise,’ and alas, it met the selfsame fate.
Pres. Putin, for his part, said of this meeting with Pres. Biden that he hoped to continue a dialogue with the U.S. of A. about guarantees which Russia was seeking for its national security. Russian foreign minister Mr. Lavrov confirmed afterwards that at the start of 2022 the USA and Russia would indeed meet to discuss a set of security guarantees which Russia had formally submitted as a ‘draft treaty’ with NATO (which you will need to read with a VPN because of the Western blackout on Russian media), namely that NATO would not be expanded any further eastward up to and including Ukraine and that NATO would not place missiles pointed at Russia in Ukraine.
‘We don’t want a war,’ stated Mr. Lavrov. ‘We don’t want to take the path of confrontation, but we will ensure our security using the means we consider necessary.’ The Biden-Harris administration signaled preliminarily that some of Russia’s requests were non-negotiable but that others were negotiable. ‘There are some things we’re prepared to work on, and we do believe there is merit in having discussion,’ stated Karen Donfried, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. ‘There are other things that the Russians know will be unacceptable.’ In the meantime, the USA spent $300 million more on military aid to Ukraine, including $20 million to militarise Ukraine’s borders with Russia and Belarus.
In another virtual summit ahead of the scheduled negotiations, Pres. Biden and Pres. Putin traded warning shots. Pres. Biden warned Pres. Putin that the U.S. of A. would ‘respond decisively’ if Russia invaded Ukraine. Pres. Putin warned Pres. Biden that further sanctions on Russia over Ukraine would result in a ‘total severance of relations’ between the two countries and would damage ‘Russia’s relations with the West in general.’
Yet Western officials, in effect, ended the talks with the Russians before they had even begun. U.S. State Sec. Blinken and NATO Sec.-Gen. Stoltenberg publicly rejected Russia’s condition that NATO end its eastward expansion. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price publicly rejected Russia’s condition that NATO withdraw the troops amassed on Russia’s border. Shortly before the negotiations with Russia, Pres. Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan conferred with so-called ‘anti-Russia hawks’ for advice, including Kurt Volker (the consultant for a Raytheon-representing lobbying firm and the director of a Raytheon-funded think tank who convinced Pres. Trump to send Raytheon-made missiles to Ukraine).
The USA-Russia summit, which took place on 10 January in Geneva, and was a part of a week of such summits (NATO-Russia in Brussels on 12 January, USA-Russia-OSCE in Vienna on 13 January) was thus stillborn, as the Americans had publicly ruled out all of the Russians’ most important security conditions a priori. Ominously, after the failed talks, the Russians requested that the Americans put their final position in writing. According to Russian foreign minister Mr. Lavrov, ‘the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward’ is ‘the key to everything.’
Pres. Biden attempted to alleviate Russia’s frustration after the abortive summit, speculating that ‘the likelihood that Ukraine is going to join NATO in the near term is not very likely,’ and suggesting that the U.S. of A. and Russia can ‘work something out’ about NATO missile deployments on Russia’s border. Perhaps because of how the original gentleman’s agreement with a Yank president not to expand NATO eastward has been ignored by ungentlemanly Yank presidents, however, the Russians were indifferent to yet another gentleman’s agreement from a Yank president.
‘For us,’ replied Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, ‘the matter of priority is achievement of watertight, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees.’ After the fallout from the USA-Russia negotiations in Geneva, Sec. Blinken—on his way back from meeting with Pres. Zelensky in Kiev, where he announced another $200 million in military aid—stopped in Geneva to follow up with his Russian counterpart, Mr. Lavrov, but nothing new was discussed or decided.
On January 26th, the U.S. of A. and NATO provided their official written responses to Russia’s draft treaty, absolutely rejecting its conditions that NATO guarantee that it would not expand into Ukraine or any farther eastward.
Russia responded coldly to this refusal to compromise. ‘There is no positive reaction in this document on the main issue, our clear-cut position on the inadmissibility of NATO’s further eastward expansion and the deployment of strike armaments that may threaten the territory of the Russian Federation,’ stated Mr. Lavrov, who added that Russia can ‘expect the commencement of a serious talk but on secondary issues.’ According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Russia ‘cannot say that our thoughts have been taken into account or that a willingness has been shown to take our concerns into account,’ and whilst the USA and NATO left the door open for negotiation on other related issues, their written response left ‘little ground for optimism.’
One of these other related issues where to Messrs. Lavrov and Peskov referred was the reestablishment of the disarmament/denuclearisation agreements which the Americans had been systematically dismantling since 2001 when Pres. Bush unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 and began re-installing American missile systems throughout Europe. In 2019, despite repeated Russian entreaties, Pres. Trump unilaterally withdrew the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1988 and refused all Russian entreaties to extend the New START arms treaty of 1994 (which was extended in the eleventh hour as soon as the Biden-Harris administration was inaugurated). ‘We continue to insist it is a priority to reach a principled understanding that the problems in this area must be urgently addressed,’ stated Vladimir Yermakov, director of arms controul for the Russian foreign ministry. ‘Otherwise, new “missile crises” are unavoidable.’ Russia’s maximal demand was the return of American nuclear weapons in non-nuclear NATO members to the USA, and its minimal demand was a moratorium on the deployment in NATO members of missiles which were previously banned under the INF Treaty.
The official written Russian reply to the Americans expressed regret that they had not received a ‘constructive response’ to their draft treaty and stated that unless the Americans and their allies agreed on ‘firm, legally binding guarantees to ensure our security’ they would be compelled to ensure their own security ‘through the implementation of military-technical measures.’
The same day that Russia received the rejection of its security guarantees from the U.S. of A. and NATO, Russia and Ukraine met in Paris and Berlin to continue negotiations in the so-called ‘Normandy Format’ (that is, with France and Germany as mediators) which had led to the Minsk peace plans in 2014 and 2015. Unfortunately, that summit was also stillborn, and zero progress was made towards firming up the ceasefire in Donbas or recognising the autonomous status of Donbas, both of which were points in Minsk II.
It was not just the refusal of the parties to the conflict to compromise which caused the failure of the Normandy-Format negotiations, but their refusal to communicate with each other. Russia continued to insist that in order to make any progress on the points in the peace plan, Ukraine must negotiate directly with the LDNR, but Ukraine continued to refuse to take any action that would ‘recognise’ the separatists. A ‘key obstacle was Kyiv’s opposition to negotiating with the pro-Russian separatists,’ explained the Washington Post. ‘As the talks continue to stall and the threat of war grows more present, it’s unclear how much pressure the United States is placing on Ukraine to reach a compromise with Russia.’ Moreover, according to the New York Times, Pres. Zelensky ‘would be taking extreme political risks even to entertain a peace deal’ with Russia, for his government ‘could be rocked and possibly overthrown’ in another Euromaidan-esque insurrection if he ‘agrees to a peace deal that in their minds gives too much to Moscow.’ As Pres. Zelensky put it, ‘I have no intention of talking to terrorists and it is just impossible for me in my position,’ thereby effectively canceling Minsk II.
Likewise, Russia gradually adopted a similar attitude towards Ukraine, looking down on it as an American proxy with no agency, as expressed in a diatribe by Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and former Russian president. Mr. Medvedev denounced Pres. Zelensky as ‘weak,’ ‘ignorant,’ and ‘unreliable,’ and mocked Ukraine’s ‘complete dependence’ on the USA. ‘How can you negotiate and strike deals with him?’ asked Mr. Medvedev. ‘It’s pointless for us to deal with vassals.’ Mr. Medvedev was especially critical of Pres. Zelensky, who is Jewish, for ‘serving the most rabid nationalist forces in Ukraine,’ and warned ‘at some point, when the political situation changes, they’ll sew a yellow star on your back.’ Mr. Medvedev advised that the Russians should wait until the Ukrainian leadership is ‘sane’ and not beholden to domestic extremists or foreign interferers. ‘Russia knows how to wait,’ he concluded. ‘We are patient people.’
To return to the analogy of the ‘Blundering Generation,’ Ukraine’s refusal to communicate with the LDNR because of the implications of ‘recognition,’ or whatever, is analogous to how Abraham Lincoln, because he did not recognise the legality of secession, refused to communicate with the Confederate commissioners dispatched to Washington D.C. and charged with negotiating a settlement of outstanding issues between the USA and the CSA (such as custody of old forts of the former within the new borders of the latter). Because the President did not deign to talk to his enemies, neither side understood the intentions of the other, and a conflict over a harbour fort—Fort Sumter—became the immediate cause of the war and the death of approximately 620,000 Americans.13 Americans are taught that this is a supreme exemplification of statesmanship to be emulated.
The failed round of Normandy-Format negotiations sent the French and the Germans into shuttle-diplomacy mode, scrambling to save the Minsk agreement which they had helped to negotiate. In a call from Pres. Emmanuel Macron to Pres. Putin, the latter complained of the ‘pumping of modern weapons and ammunition by NATO countries into Ukraine, which pushes Kiev to a military solution to the so-called Donbass problem.’
Shortly after the failed round of Normandy-Format negotiations on the implementation of Minsk II, Oleksiy Danilov (Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council) publicly repudiated the peace plan and insulted its mediators. ‘The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction,’ stated Sec. Danilov. ‘When they were signed under the Russian gun barrel—and the Germans and the French watched—it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement those documents.’
So, after a year of blunders—of confrontation and refusal to compromise with Russia—in basically a single day the West blunderingly rejected Russia’s ‘red line’ on NATO expansion into Ukraine, and Ukraine blunderingly rejected the peace plan to which it had agreed with Russia. It was then, as the Russian foreign minister Mr. Lavrov put, that ‘we reached our boiling point.’
The final blunder, and perhaps the one which precipitated war, came at the 2022 Munich Security Conference on 14 February, when Pres. Zelensky threatened that Ukraine would pursue nuclear weapons:
Since 2014, Ukraine has made three attempts to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three attempts failed. Today Ukraine will make the fourth attempt. And I will make my first attempt as the President.
But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time. I initiate consultations within the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was instructed to convene them. If they do not take place again or they do not result in concrete decisions to ensure the security of our state, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the 1994 package decisions have been called into question.14
Pres. Zelensky’s threat of a nuclearised Ukraine was, to return to the analogy of the ‘Blundering Generation,’ analogous to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry—not so much his doomed attempt to start an insurrection in the Slave States, but more when abolitionists made a martyr out of him and Republican officials refused to enforce the laws against conspirators of his whom had escaped into the Free States. Just as it was not hard for Southerners to reckon ‘what we have to expect,’15 so it was not hard for the Russians to reckon what they would have to expect from a nuclear-armed Ukraine.
The Russian parliament (the Duma) passed a resolution on 15 February requesting that Pres. Putin recognise the LDNR, which had renewed their request for Russian recognition as ceasefire violations mounted. Initially, the Kremlin responded to the Duma’s resolution by reiterating its commitment to the Minsk peace plans. ‘The president has received the request, he reacted to it, he took it into account,’ stated Kremlin spokesman Mr. Peskov, adding that ‘the recognition is not in line with the Minsk agreements.’ According to Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, ‘The Minsk agreements are the sole basis for settling the conflict in Donbass, which has no alternative.’ Pres. Putin himself, when asked about the Duma’s vote, answered, ‘We are really hoping that both our partners overseas and in Europe, above all Germany and France, will exert appropriate influence over the Kiev authorities.’
As the conflict in Donbas escalated, however, with increased shelling from the nationalists (OSCE monitors recorded 591 ceasefire violations in Donetsk and 975 in Lugansk on 19 February alone) and a mass-evacuation of civilians (causing another migrant crisis from Ukraine into Russia), Pres. Putin convened his security council to reconsider the Duma’s resolution. ‘I see no other way,’ stated Russian foreign minister Mr. Lavrov, in favour of recognition. ‘As for offering the West two or three days to come to its senses, it is a matter of taste, of course, but it will certainly not change its position.’
On 21 February, Pres. Putin delivered a speech announcing that due to the breakdown in diplomacy over the status of Donbas within Ukraine and the status of Ukraine within NATO, Russia would recognise the LDNR and commence diplomatic and military relations with them. The next day, the OSCE recorded another 703 ceasefire violations in Donetsk and 1,224 in Lugansk.
The Minsk peace plan was already defunct de facto due to persistent Ukrainian ceasefire violations and an obstinate Ukrainian refusal to initiate a dialogue with the LDNR, but with Pres. Putin’s final and formal recognition of the LDNR, it was now defunct de jure. ‘In this sense, no, the Minsk agreements are non-existent now. Why should they be implemented if we recognize the independence of these republics?’ stated Pres. Putin at a press conference. ‘The Minsk agreements were killed long before yesterday’s recognition of the Donbas republics, and not by us, not by these republics, but by Kiev’s current authorities.’
Prior to Pres. Putin’s speech, he had informed the French and German heads of state of his intention to recognize the LDNR ‘in the near future,’ and although they ‘expressed disappointment’ they also ‘expressed their readiness to continue contacts.’ Sec. Blinken canceled plans to meet with his Russian counterpart, Min. Lavrov, in Geneva to continue discussion of the draft treaty which Russia had proposed and which the USA had rejected.
After the Russian parliament ratified treaties of alliance with the LDNR, Pres. Putin ordered Russian ‘peace-keepers’ into Donbas and announced a ‘special military operation.’
Next: ‘Conclusion’
Previous: ‘7. Ukraine’s Unworthy Victims’
‘It resolved which way this country was going and it resolved which way this country was not going. Fairly early in the war, Robert Toombs gave it the best definition. He said, “I look at it as a war between two forms of society, and we’re going to see which way we go.” And he was not simply talking about slavery, although he certainly included that. He was talking about other things. He was talking about an agrarian way of life, for example, in contrast to an industrial way of life. I look on it somewhat that way, too. I don’t regret that the South lost the war. The big compromise suits me. That is, it’s probably best that the country remained one country, and I also believe that the South fought bravely for a cause in which it believed. That’s the great compromise, and I got with that and I hate to see that violated.’—Shelby Foote with George Liston Seay at the Woodrow Wilson Center, 1997
Pace great historians like Gary W. Gallagher whom have lent their names to this historical narrative, my opinion is that the ‘Myth of the Lost Cause’ underrates the importance of human memory (hence its sloppy usage of ‘myth’ as if it were merely synonymous with ‘fantasy’ or ‘fable’), exhibits the pedantic ‘fact-checker’ character of the press which does not distinguish between something which is not true (but true enough) or true (but not true enough), and is signally unaware of its own ‘myths.’ Clyde N. Wilson, professor emeritus from the University of South Carolina has, in his article ‘Nolan’s Myth of the Lost Cause,’ his lecture at the 2012 Abbeville Institute Scholars Conference ‘The War to Prevent Southern Independence: My Myth or Yours?’, his book Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence, and many other texts and speeches, criticised the Myth of the Lost Cause.
Donald Livingston, the founding father and former chairman of the Abbeville Institute, often raises this point to demonstrate the problem with the ‘pro-slavery’ and ‘anti-slavery’ dichotomy in terms of which Antebellum-American history has traditionally been written. (A sounder dichotomy, according to Prof. Livingston, is that of ‘Jeffersonians’ and ‘Lincolnians,’ each with differing philosophies about the form and function of state and society, including what was to be done about slavery.) Prof. Livingston’s lectures—the word ‘magisterial’ has become a cliché thanks to overblown book blurbs, but his lectures have a truly magisterial tone and tenor—are available at the Abbeville Institute, but ‘Why the War Was Not About Slavery’ (an essay which was included in the anthology that the Sons of Confederate Veterans published for the Civil War’s sesquicentennial anniversary) is the most comprehensive presentation of his thought.
A special edition of the New York Times Magazine named for the year when the first African slaves arrived in the Thirteen Colonies of British America, the thesis of ‘The 1619 Project’ was that ‘everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.’ I do not have the space herein to give such a sweepingly stupid claim its due refutation, but suffice it to say that the exact opposite is true. Slavery is utterly unexceptional in human history, but what made our Anglo-American civilisation exceptional was not slavery but anti-slavery. That is, the first anti-slavery movement in world history originated among Anglo-Americans and, moreover, originated among Anglo-American slaveholders who were acting out of conscience. In any event, ‘conservative’ responses to the 1619 Project, such as that of John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist, Allen C. Guelzo at City Journal, National Review’s special issue ‘A Defense of America’ (the worst since its priggish ‘Against Trump’ special issue), or the ‘1776 Project’ commissioned by Pres. Trump, further retreated into the ‘Proposition Nation’ civic religion of Lincolnian-Americanism and stabbed Jeffersonian-Americans in the back. Brion McClanahan, who is a veritable Jeffersonian ‘host unto himself,’ wrote a much more historically literate and intellectually honest critique for Chronicles Magazine, ‘Deconstructing the 1619 Project,’ which did not cravenly attempt to write the South out of American history.
The riots in the summer of 2020 expressed three truths all at once.
First, they were an expression of ignorance about the cause of disproportionate rates of blue-on-black violence and black incarceration: Rather than racist cops, disproportionate rates of black crime. After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (which Pres. Obama’s Justice Department found was justifiable self-defence) The Washington Post began an annual database of fatal police shootings. How many unarmed black people were shot and killed by the police in 2020? As of the fall of 2020, 9 out of 667 (1.3%)! That was on track to be the lowest number on record since WaPo began measuring that data 5 years before: 38 out of 994 (3.8%) in 2015, 19 out of 962 (1.9%) in 2016, 22 out of 986 (2.2%) in 2017, 23 out of 991 (2.3%) in 2018, and 14 out of 1,001 in 2019 (1.3%). Moreover, as Pres. Obama’s DOJ judiciously noted in its report on the seminal ‘Black Lives Matter’ incident in Ferguson, not every shooting of an ‘unarmed’ person is necessarily unjustified.
Contrast the number of fatal shootings of unarmed black people by the police with the number of police feloniously killed over the same period: 41 in 2015, 66 in 2016, 46 in 2017, 55 in 2018, and 48 in 2019. Black people comprise 13% of the U.S. population yet comprise 45.9%, 25.4%, 36.3%, 41.8%, and 30.6% of offenders in those killings, respectively. If you break this down into per-capita terms, a police officer is many times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
So, with all due respect to the victims of unjustified killings by the police, the data show that these injustices are extremely rare and thus the opposite of ‘systemic.’ Needless to say, this should be welcomed as good news, yet there is such an emotional investment in this worldview (more on that below) that facts such as these are met with anger and accusations of racism. Many Blue-State Americans have internalised beliefs which are, unfortunately for them (but fortunately for black lives), false. Indeed, when I did the math on this at the time, I was so disgusted with the angry reaction from my own friends and family— who, notably, did not question that what I was saying was true, but rather questioned my motives in saying it—that I quit social media.
Second, the 1619 riots were an expression of ‘hypernormalisation,’ a term which I learned from Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan of ‘Red Scare.’ Mmes. Nekrasova and Khachiyan took this term from filmmaker Adam Curtis’ eponymous documentary, which took it from the book of Russian professor Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. According to Prof. Yurchak, by the 1970s and 1980s everyone was aware that the system was failing but no one was able to imagine an alternative to the status quo, so they carried on living as if everything was normal even though it was not. Over time, everyone became so committed to the illusion of normalcy that it became, in effect, actual normalcy—‘hypernormalisation.’ Mmes. Nekrasova and Khachiyan’s argument is that in these U.S. of A. hypernormalisation is working in reverse: American politics are so invested in maintaining the pretence of a society that is more dysfunctional than it is in reality that many Americans can no longer imagine an alternative to this dystopia and have come to truly believe in it.
Third, the 1619 riots were an expression of ‘anarcho-tyranny’ (anarchy for the law-breakers and tax-consumers, tyranny for the law-abiders and tax-payers) as the ‘lockdown’ and ‘social distancing’ policies which public-health experts had been enforcing since that spring to ‘stop the spread’ and ‘flatten the curve’ were suddenly suspended when public-health experts proclaimed that ‘white supremacy is the real virus.’ The anarcho-tyranny inherent in the American system was again exposed when, after a season of nationwide left-wing civil unrest, a single day of right-wing civil unrest at Capitol Hill was lugubriously and ludicrously trumped up into an ‘attack on democracy itself’ and nothing less than ‘domestic terrorism.’ In other words, the journos and pols who, out of one side of their mouth were comparing the political violence of Black Lives Matter and Antifa to the Boston Tea Party were, out of the other side, making the case for contemporary Intolerable Acts.
Phil Leigh, an amateur historian who contributed to the New York Times’ series on the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War, has written and spoken prolifically against the mendacious and malicious arguments derived from this woke-nationalist narrative— ‘The Real Reason for Confederate Monuments,’ ‘Robert E. Lee and (Woke General) Please Like Me,’ ‘The Postwar Lee at Washington College,’ ‘Robert E. Lee: Educator and Conciliator,’ and more—alas to no avail. His most recent book, The Dreadful Frauds: Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics, is a critique of the ideology underlying the woke-nationalist narrative.
Reminder: Crimea was a part of Russia for 171 years until 68 years ago, when a Soviet dictator from Ukraine redrew the map of the Soviet Union and attached it to Ukraine (a state which, 36 years earlier, another Soviet dictator redrew the map of Russia to create).
Yeghia Tashjian, a Lebanese-Armenian scholar of political science writing in The Armenian Weekly, ‘Aliyev, Once Again, Threatens Armenia with War,’ expressed his presentiments about the possibilities of Turkey and Ukraine’s newfound relationship:
However, my greatest fear is on a regional level. It is no secret that Ukraine is preparing for war or at least triggering an armed conflict in Russian-controlled Donbass with Turkish and Western blessing. It has been two weeks since I began monitoring the Ukrainian and Russian army’s supply routes and deployment of heavy weaponry near Donbass. Kyiv, motivated by the Turkish and Azerbaijani victory in Artsakh, tried to establish military relations with Turkey and bought Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones. Russia, aware that it may engage in a two-front war and knowing well that Armenia cannot defend itself against another Turkish-Azerbaijani invasion, is consolidating its presence in southern Armenia by building military posts and reopening the abandoned airfield of Sisian in Syunik.
Most concerning is that Turkey and Azerbaijan may take advantage of a possible war in Ukraine to divert Russian attention from the South Caucasus and conduct an operation against Armenia. According to Greek City Times, the question begs whether Moscow would be able to handle simultaneous conflicts in the South Caucasus and Ukraine, if Azerbaijan and Ukraine are to launch simultaneous offensives in the spring. To add fuel to the fire, Turkey may open new fronts in Syria and Libya thus putting Russia in a difficult position. Turkey would likely be urging Azerbaijan and Ukraine to make simultaneous actions to gain concessions from Russia, such as forcing Armenia to open a transportation corridor between Azerbaijan proper and Nakhichevan and giving a certain status to the Tatars of Crimea. The fear is that Russia may choose the first, as Crimea falls within the current territories of the Russian Federation and any Turkish intervention in Russia’s domestic affairs would be disastrous for the Kremlin.
Later that year, on 26 October, Ukraine used one of these Bayraktar drones to carry out an airstrike in Donbas. ‘The use of such vehicles is banned by the Minsk Agreements,’ stated Alexander Lukashevich, Russia’s representative to the OSCE. ‘Also, flights of any type of drone, except OSCE Special Monitoring Mission drones, are prohibited by the measures on reinforcement of the ceasefire regime.’ The ‘Voice of America,’ U.S. state media which broadcasts to audiences abroad, ‘fact-checked’ Mr. Lukashevich’s claims as ‘false,’ arguing that as drones were not specifically banned under the ceasefire agreement, it was therefore not a violation of the ceasefire agreement to use them.
Pres. Zelensky is right, but for the wrong reason. Azerbaijan, like Ukraine, is a nation-state which was invented by the Bolshevists when they redrew the map of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union. The region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, like the regions of Crimea and Donbas in Ukraine, was populated with people of one nationality (Armenians), but was nonetheless ceded to a state comprised of another nationality (Azeris). Nagorno-Karabakh, like Crimea and Donbas, voted to break away from Azerbaijan after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but the ‘international community’—determined to defend outdated Soviet-era borders over the self-determination of the people living within those borders—has refused to recognise this and refers as the region as ‘occupied’ (occupied by whom? the people who live there?). Turkey-backed Azerbaijan, like NATO-backed Ukraine, has warred to occupy the separatist region, the former with more success than the latter. Thus, whilst Pres. Zelensky’s argument for why Crimea and Donbas must be forced back into Ukraine is indeed identical, mutatis mutandis, to Azeri president Ilham Aliyev’s argument for why Nagorno-Karabakh must be forced back into Azerbaijan, that is not as flattering of a comparison as he seems to think. As a Jeffersonian-American, I am always on the side of self-determination and, in contrast to Lincolnian-Americans, I am always against the side supplanting the consent of the governed, whether by majoritarian or authoritarian means.
Remember when Ron Paul was, to the everlasting infamy of the ‘conservative, Christian’ GOP, booed for invoking the Golden Rule in a primary debate?
Of course, Turkey’s membership in NATO belies all of that military bloc’s claims of enforcing ‘the rules-based international order’ or, for that matter, having ‘Euro-Atlantic values’ (or at least makes one question what those values are). Turkey, under its current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who is as much of a dictator as Vladimir Putin but much more dangerous), has arguably become the most militarily aggressive country in the world. Whilst NATO members armchair-psychoanalyse Pres. Putin, speculating that his reactive policies to military brinksmanship on the Russian border indicate that he is a crypto-Stalinist plotting to rebuild the Soviet Union, NATO member Pres. Erdogan is openly boasting about rebuilding a long-lost Islamist caliphate by annexing the lands of the former Ottoman Empire with nary a word of reproof from NATO. It is worse than absurd; it is obscene.
Historians who admire Abraham Lincoln and whose historical narrative is in the ‘Just Cause’ tradition are quite candid about explaining, exultingly so, how Lincoln schemed to start a war which neither U.S. nor C.S. Americans wanted but which he believed—and they, the historians, believe—was a ‘necessary sacrifice’ for the ‘greater good.’ Specifically, Lincoln used subordinates like William H. Seward to equivocate with the Confederate commissioners about the forts whilst secretly plotting to use the forts as a flashpoint, thereby obtaining a casus belli and manufacturing consent for war among U.S. Americans. Lincoln’s scheme of forcing the C.S. Americans to blunder into ‘firing the first shot’ was so effective that to this very day many Americans and even some American historians assume that the ‘firing on the flag’ at Fort Sumter was an insult and actual injury that Lincoln absolutely had to avenge. Two scholars of the Mises Institute, John V. Denson (author of A Century of War: Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt, as well as editor of The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories and Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom) and Thomas DiLorenzo (author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, and The Problem with Lincoln), have advanced critical revisionist accounts of the cause of the war.
Without going too astray from the narrative of the past year, suffice it to say that Ukraine’s obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Russia’s obligations under the Budapest Memorandum are by no means a ‘package decision.’ When the Soviet Union dissolved, the status of Soviet nuclear weapons throughout the ex-Soviet states like Ukraine posed a global security problem. Ukraine, in its ‘Declaration of Sovereignty’ in 1990, had pledged ‘not to accept, produce, or acquire nuclear weapons,’ but it still had them within its borders left over from the Soviet Union. In 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States adopted the Minsk Agreement (no relation to the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015) which gave Russia responsibility for all nuclear weapons in ex-Soviet states. In 1992, Ukraine agreed to the ‘Lisbon Protocol,’ which physically returned all Soviet-era nuclear weapons left in Ukraine to Russia (which already had technical controul of them anyway).
Pacta sunt servanda is a principle of international law: ‘Agreements must be kept.’ By this time, however, Ukraine was so poor that before returning the weapons it demanded compensation and other guarantees from Russia and the West. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum was established in this context. In an interview with InterFax in December of 2021 (which you will need a VPN to read because of the Western blackout on Russian media), Russian deputy foreign minister Mr. Ryabkov explained the Russian point of view. ‘The Budapest Memorandum concerns security guarantees for Ukraine as a non-nuclear state within the meaning of the NPT,’ stated Min. Ryabkov, ‘and from this point of view, all guarantees have been provided and observed.’
Clausula rebus sic stantibus is another principle of international law: An agreement can be nullified because of ‘things thus standing’ (that is, a fundamental change in circumstances). ‘But the Budapest Memorandum,’ continued Min. Ryabkov, ‘does not make the slightest mention of the coups in Ukraine or subsequent actions, or the possibility that some of the population, which lived within the borders of Ukraine at the time, should decide whether they should continue living there or return to the Russian Federation.’ According to Min. Ryabkov, the Ukrainians and their Western allies have turned ‘the meaning of the Budapest Memorandum upside down.’
Remember, Ukraine is a country where terrorists and gangsters hold key security positions and the head of state does not have full controul over the military/police. Nuclear weapons for such an unstable country should be absolutely unacceptable to the world (not just to Russia) and result in a non-military international isolation of the country (cf. Iran, North Korea) if not outright international military intervention.
Jonathan White, in his lecture at the Abbeville Institute’s 2008 Summer School: Northern Anti-Slavery Rhetoric, ‘What We Have to Expect: Abolitionism, Extradition, and Secession,’ and his 2022 book with Abbeville Institute Press, How Radical Republican Antislavery Rhetoric and Violence Precipitated Secession, has provided the most authoritative account of how John Brown, although failed to achieve any of his immediate objectives, accelerated the political crisis of the 1850s that culminated in civil war, which was his ultimate objective.