The debate over the cause of the war in Ukraine often centers on a single question: “Was it Putin’s imperial impulses that led to the Kremlin’s invasion, or the West’s disregard for Russia’s security concerns?”? Scholars, students, commentators, politicians et al, have their separate training, sources, and life experiences to shape their views. Some analyses are based solely on motives.
Ukraine, CIA and Azov
There are those like John Mearsheimer who assert that Putin was only being rational when he launched his “special military operations”. Mearsheimer even suggests that if he were Putin he would have acted sooner. A confirmation that Putin’s actions were not only warranted, but morally just.
I have heard other sophists claim that the US helped stage the coup which brought Zelensky to power. Further, some even assure us that the CIA worked with the Azov Battalion to ready them for conducting covert operations against Russia. The producers at Russian Television (RT) must beam triumphantly at every mention of this disclosure.
Less hyperventilating sources suggest that NATO’s enlargement fueled Putin’s rise and stoked Russian nationalism. They claim that Russia’s imperialistic designs did not spontaneously combust. They required an external ignition source. That spark as they see it was the threat posed by NATO at Russia’s border. To support their point, such pundits often reach back to the George H. W. Bush era and invoke a promise James Baker made to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. The statement that NATO would expand eastward “not one inch” was conveyed by Baker, but it was made within the context of the primary discussion – the unification of Germany. The ultimate agreement focused specifically on Germany and never explicitly disavowed future expansion.
NATO and Moscow
Despite the fact that the comment was made a generation ago to another administration of different government (USSR), the Kremlin continues to express outrage over what they claim is another betrayal by the West. They conceal the fact that the exchange between Baker and Gorbachev was never an agreement. Yet as myth, it remains justification for Putin’s empire cult. The Russo-Georgian War, the cyberattacks against Estonia, the breach of the Budapest Memorandum, the annexation of Crimea, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine are merely responses to the West’s treachery. The Kremlin also took note that if Ukraine had been a member of NATO as are its Polish, Slovakian, Hungarian, and Romanian neighbors, their actions would have been an act of war and could trigger a response.
In the real world, however, Ukraine’s admission to NATO was never a serious topic. Even after the invasion, Biden was reluctant to entertain the idea. Despite the failings of Obama’s “reset”, the goal of working toward more predictable relations with Moscow was still a major thrust of US foreign policy. The inclusion of Sweden and Finland in the alliance was a direct outcome of Putin’s illegal invasion. For that development, Putin has himself to blame.
Europe and Ukraine
For the record, let us recall the facts.
In November 2013, protesters gathered in Maidan Square, Kiev, to demonstrate against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the European Union Association Agreement in favor of membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
The Eurasian Union was a token attempt at economic regionalism and a veiled instrument of Russian geopolitics. Many contend it survives as merely another façade to reconstitute the Soviet Union. Putin promoted the EEU grandly, although it offered little incentive in the way of any real political or market institutions. The aim of the agreement was to pull Ukraine away from Brussels and closer to Moscow.
The reversal of President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision sparked protests, which grew in size and intensity. The movement became known as “the revolution of dignity.” What began as peaceful protests the night of November 21, 2013 gained momentum through the winter. On January 16, the government introduced a series of repressive laws harshly restricting civil society and the right to protest. The reaction widened and from the 20th through the 22nd of February, 2014, eighty-eight people were killed by government forces during the Maidan Square protests. Some victims were shot by rooftop snipers.
The people eventually overwhelmed government security forces and seized the administration buildings. On February 22, they set out to form a new government. While his private residences were also being seized, Yanukovych fled to Russia.
Putin declares he will assure and protect ethnic Russians in the near-abroad from any Western underhandedness. Defending those people’s rights includes formal security guarantees and the banning of future NATO membership for Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics. In truth, what forced Putin’s hand was not treachery and betrayal by the West. Rather, it was the fear from democratic trends – not NATO enlargement.
The color revolutions, Arab Spring, Syria, rumblings from the Baltic to Central Asia, and domestic dissent in 2011 provoked alarm among Russian elites who fear their system is vulnerable and their leadership might be unsustainable. In this worldview, Vladimir Putin construes events and makes the charge that the West’s modern cries for “democratization” are merely voicing the same false outrage and code word used by the former imperial powers when they invoked their calls for “civilization” during the period of colonization. He claims that Russia’s current adversaries are the heirs of that previous institution.
Putin and his dreams
In order to defend Russia from these irreconcilable differences in values, Putin reasons that: Chem sil’nee gosudarstvo, tem svobodnee lichnost (Чем сильней государство, тем свободней личность): “The stronger the state, the freer the individual.” Conformably, dissent is akin to treason. The cry for independence is confrontational and wreaks conflict. Ukraine’s cries for independence were a demand for dignity, human rights, and eliminating corruption. If that is confrontational – so be it.
I am open to everyone’s views, judgement, and even their biases. My job is to try to understand them against what I know to be true. At times, there is frustration. A fellow academic, whom protocol requires I refer to as “colleague”, once lectured me on the events which took place during the Maidan Protests. His analysis included a description of my opinion and me as, “the willing victim of a disinformation campaign by the right-wing Ukrainian militants who initiated the violence”. A “willing victim of a disinformation campaign” is a convenient default when specious arguments come up against the tyranny of facts.
Facts stand by their “own intelligible light” I have been told. Yet, amidst the onslaught of white noise they can be obscured.
