It could have been easily avoided
The West brought war to Ukraine after its insults to Russia
The war in Ukraine caused widespread destruction.
AFP
Zelensky said that NATO had failed his country by refusing to join it.
AFP
The Biden administration focused on undermining Russia, not only in the current conflict, but in any future military adventure.
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During the past seven months of the war in Ukraine, with the support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), especially the countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean, a Western official narrative that depicts the conflict as between the young and brave Ukrainian David and the savage Goliath, Russia, has been fueled.
According to this account, this war is unjustified, in which the United States and the United Kingdom alone provided $57 billion in arms and non-arms aid to Ukraine.
The Western written and visual media feed this narrative with daily reports of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians, and the search for the causes of this war between two historically close neighbors will remain in a state of deep freeze, but when the historical assessment of what happened comes, the author and researcher's book will have The American University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Eblo, whose title is “How the West brought the war to Ukraine” is of inestimable importance.
This Eblo is a researcher in international security, works in the medical field, and his method here appears clinical.
Although he denounces this war, he talks in the same context about a series of insults that the West has inflicted on Russia during the past 30 years.
Familiar insults to Russia
For those who followed the course of the war, these insults seem familiar, but they are not present in the main narrative, including the deployment of NATO about 1,600 kilometers on the Russian border, despite the assurances given to the late Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and the statement of the NATO conference held in 2008. In Bucharest that Ukraine and Georgia are on their way to NATO membership, and the United States unilaterally abandoned treaties to limit ballistic and medium-range missiles, followed by the deployment of defensive systems capable of becoming offensive, in Eastern European countries that became members of NATO, In addition to provocation and aggression, these countries joined NATO's military maneuvers on the ground and in the Black Sea.
Eblo mentions a group of diplomats, scholars, policy experts, and senior military, including former US ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock, distinguished US diplomat Chas Freeman, University of Chicago politics professor John Mearsheimer, British expert Richard Sacqua, former US Army colonel and former military advisor Former US President Donald Trump, Douglas McGregor, all engage in stinging criticism of the West's role in the war in Ukraine.
The scenario of the shoe on the other foot
Perhaps the only and perfect explanation for the condemnation came from the American George Kanan, who was the architect of containing the Soviet Union, who said, “The catastrophic mistake is to start a new Cold War,” and Iblot put forward the “shoe on the other foot scenario,” that is, how the West would react if the Warsaw Pact, which Was it led by the Soviet Union that won the Cold War and began to include members of NATO in order to establish a military presence in Canada or Mexico?
This would raise a related issue, namely: the Monroe Doctrine, which was put forward by the United States in 1823, which enshrines the Americas as the sphere of influence of the United States.
We as Americans resort to this principle regularly in American interventions in Central and South America, yet we have denied such a right to Russia's strategic interests in its neighbours.
The main strength of Iblo's argument lies in its handling not only of the current conflict but also of its potentially catastrophic consequences, the most obvious of which is the current and limited proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, which could erupt into a regional or perhaps larger conflict.
Possible catalysts for escalation
Incidents such as the sinking of the Russian warship "Moskova" in the Black Sea, the loss of 40 of its sailors, the targeted killing of 12 Russian generals, and above all military and non-military aid provided by the United States and its allies to Ukraine may be potential catalysts for an escalation.
Iblot noted the contradiction in two stated goals of US support for Ukraine, the first being to strengthen Ukraine to have an effective defense force, and the second being emphasized in the repeated news releases issued by the administration of President Joe Biden, intended to undermine Russia not only in the current conflict but in Any future military adventure.
This far exceeds the process of providing protection to Ukraine and ensures the continuation of the war, with high levels of killing and destruction, and has made both Russia and the United States rush towards a policy of armaments and increase the specter of confrontation between them.
And Russia, which has suffered many casualties, can be on alert, and Iplo indicated that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov issued many threats, or perhaps an unintended nuclear attack occurred as a result of a computer error, and there were false warnings before, but they were at a less dangerous time. from now on.
counter-narrative
Certainly, this convincing counter-narrative should stimulate discussion of these ideas that Eblo hardly touches on, and we can cite a few of them for example: first, one of the tragic lessons of this war is that for the time being, at least, Ukraine's entry into NATO is merely They are, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted shortly after the war, when he said, "NATO has let us down by not entering it."
And who knows what madness this behavior reflects?
But the truth is, if a member of NATO and perhaps the French president had canceled the idea of Ukraine's membership, this war would not have taken place in the first place.
Second, Russia linked the American intervention in the war with the threat of regime change, and we can look at previous events, such as Tbilisi and Bishkek, not to mention Baghdad and Tripoli, in addition to the statements of members of the US Congress and the executive authority, and it is not far from Russia that Russia will be the last and therefore Russia’s response was proactive to close this door.
And third, within Ukraine itself, why did Zelensky and his predecessor Petro Proshchenko change their electoral pledges to continue positive relations with Russia?
Threats from local hard-line nationalists were many.
Finally, there is increasing amounts of evidence from Western media censorship of any attempt to question the official narrative.
Why?
If they are as true as they claim, why the fear of skeptical questions?
The most recent of these examples is that CBS News stifled an investigative report in diverting quantities of weapons from Western sources not to the front lines in Ukraine but to the black markets in Europe.
As an ironic footnote to this, for whatever reason, Eblot learned that Amazon uncharacteristically refused to allow him to display an advertisement for him on its platform, an important book marketing company given the amount of books it offered.
As with the war itself, these questions will continue, and for the time being, the last and appropriate word is for Benjamin Eblo, who said, “A false narrative leads to bad results.”
David Speedy is a researcher in international security
The Monroe Doctrine, which was put forward by the United States in 1823, enshrines the Americas as the sphere of influence of the United States, and we as Americans resort to this principle regularly in American interventions in Central and South America, yet we have denied such a right to Russia's strategic interests over its neighbors.
The United States and the United Kingdom alone provided $57 billion in arms and non-arms assistance to Ukraine.
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