UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA WHO LEARNS FROM WHOM
Has Russian President Vladimir Putin borrowed a page from America’s policy of intervention?
Why is it okay for the US to intervene to protect its interests but not for Russia? Unfortunately, the US media did not tell the true story of how this war came about.
BY: Nathaniel Ballantyne
TrueNewsblog – This war was preventable, and many foreign policy pundits had wondered why it was taking Russia so long to act? If you only listen to Western media, they think that Russian President Vladimir Putin is unstable and crazy. It’s the other way around; it’s the West, mainly America, that’s unstable and crazy.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the eventual split of the USSR, it was agreed that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would not expand eastward. Both the West and Russia understood the risk of inviting former Soviet republics into NATO.
NATO was formed after World War II as a collective defense organization to prevent USSR aggression. Technically, after 1989, NATO was no longer needed in the world. But the Americans had other plans. For nearly three decades, they had encouraged former Soviet republics to join NATO in hopes of encircling Russia with offensive weapons and changing the balance of power in Eastern Europe.
Over the years, several Eastern Bloc countries have joined NATO. Russian President Mickael Gorbachev made former US Secretary of State James Baker III. clear from the outset that any eastward expansion of NATO would be seen as an existential threat to the Russian Federation. American presidents since Georges W. Bush have continued the policy of NATO enlargement. The policy had been implemented against the advice of many experts, who concluded that such expansion could lead to war in Europe and potentially trigger World War III.
The Russians have always made it clear that Ukraine, which shares a long border with Russia, is the red line. When Ukraine sought NATO membership, Russia protested with good reason. Once Ukraine falls under the NATO defense mechanism, NATO could conduct military exercises with Ukraine and plant weapons such as ballistic missiles and others, just as they did in Poland, except that Ukraine is right in Russia’s backyard – an unacceptable security risk for a superpower. A risk America would never take if the tables were turned.
For decades, every time a former Soviet republic joined NATO, Russians have bemoaned their security concerns. In 1999, the Clinton White House pushed for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join NATO, the Russians complained, but the West chose to ignore Russia’s concerns.
Russia’s security concerns are valid, and no reputable foreign policy expert versed in geopolitics would dispute or deny that Russia has serious grounds for concern.
In the United States we have the Monroe Doctrine, the guiding principle of American foreign policy since World War I. This doctrine clearly states that the United States, as a world power, reserves the right to intervene militarily to defend its sphere of influence.
On more than a dozen occasions since the 1920s, the US had intervened militarily in the affairs of other sovereign countries in South America, the Caribbean, and Africa, overthrowing regimes it believed posed a challenge to its security interests.
In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world narrowly avoided a third world war. Although Russian President Nikita Khrushchev decided to base long-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from the state of Florida, the Kennedy administration determined that this posed an unacceptable security risk and invoked the Monroe Doctrine. In return for withdrawing US ballistic missiles from Turkey, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw his missiles from Cuba.
Since then, it has been assumed that each power will respect the other’s sphere of influence in order to maintain world peace.
In the history of the world there has never been a government more arrogant than America’s. The US government and its supporters assume they can do whatever they want, and others should just accept it because they know better.
Putin has proved that this is not the case. Whether you believe Putin is a dictator is not the point. The United States would have militarily attacked any country in its sphere of influence that agreed to deploy Russian nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
Putin is acting very responsibly by intervening in Ukraine to disarm a neighboring country he believes poses a serious existential threat. The US invaded Iraq under false pretenses to disarm a regime allegedly possessing nuclear weapons. Most of the world applauded this intervention, except for the women and children of Iraq who bore the brunt of this terrible nightmare.
It is best to lead by example. We in the West have set the precedent. We have told the world that a world power can intervene anywhere in the world if it sees its security or interests threatened.
In world history, the US has never intervened anywhere to protect the liberty or lives of innocent people. Such interventions always served to protect business interests.
Putin has used the pretext that he intervened in Ukraine to prevent genocide in the Dunbask region of Ukraine. But of course no thinking person would believe that, no really thinking person would have thought that the US invaded Iraq to rid it of weapons of mass destruction or to liberate the Iraqis.
The Russians learned from the US. This war in Ukraine will end like any other military intervention by a superpower, wiping out many innocent people. Putin will overthrow Zelenskyy’s government and replace it with his own, just as America has done in many places around the world. If we’re careful, we can avert nuclear war. If we don’t, the world as we know it will end.
Ukraine was a part of Russia and most likely will continue to be a part of Russia. The West simply cannot afford to escalate this war, which could have disastrous results.
The next time America decides to invade a sovereign country, we should think twice about what kind of message we’re sending to strongmen like Putin with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed west.