As long-time readers of this humble blog (all 2 1/2 of you) know full well, I was among the humans who were most vociferous in condemnation of the U.S. -- U.K. invasion and occupation of Iraq. In fact, I wrote a whole separate blog about it for some 15 years. It was an illegal war of aggression, justified by pretextual lies, there were hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and U.S. and British troops, and mercenaries, committed atrocities. People in the U.S. didn't seem to care about the human cost in Iraq nearly as much as they do already about Ukranians, and I don't have to tell you why.
The objective was to install a regime more congenial to North American and European interests, which in the view of the perpetrators included being friendly to Israel. What they got was social collapse and a horrific civil war, followed by a regime more friendly to Iran. There are a couple of points that might make a minor moral distinction between this war crime and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One is that the majority of the Iraq population did want an end to the Saddam Hussein regime, although they invaders didn't really understand anything about Iraq and in particular that there wasn't any common national identity or aspiration that could quickly lead to the emergence of a stable, less oppressive order. The original intention also was not to stay long or continue to exercise coercive control over the country. These points of difference don't make it okay, but they do need to be acknowledged.
As I said in the previous post, another difference is that Saddam didn't have a friend in the world. Many governments, including notably that of France, did condemn the invasion, but they didn't do anything to sanction the U.S. or assist the Iraqi resistance. The only exception was Iran. Once Saddam was gone, Iran did fund and arm a Shiite resistance in Iraq, for which of course the U.S. called them sponsors of terrorism. Attacking American soldiers, on the battlefield, who have invaded and are occupying your country, is considered terrorism by the United States, and there are even people in prison today for doing just that.
But obviously, that doesn't make what Putin is doing right now okay. It is in fact worse, for both moral and pragmatic considerations. The most important pragmatic consideration is that it is far more dangerous, threatening to expand beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine and in fact to endanger human civilization. (In case that hadn't occurred to you.) That also makes it even more morally reprehensible, as to the undeniable facts that Ukraine has an elected government and a strong sense of national community; and the objective is either to install a puppet government or annex the country. In other words it's an imperialist adventure, which the U.S. invasion of Iraq was not precisely.
While I wish that the international community had come together more forcefully to condemn the Iraq war, that doesn't mean I shouldn't be glad that the world is coming together to oppose Putin now. There should be no need to review the imperialist history of the U.S. The entire country consists of stolen land; and I lived through Vietnam as well as Iraq. But we need to achieve a new global consensus that this is not acceptable. If it takes Russia attacking some white people who aspire to have a western European style democracy, so be it. And to pretend that Ukraine, or NATO for that mater, somehow represent a threat to Russian security is utter nonsense.
Update: I don't know how to embed tweets so I'll just give you the image:
PS: The NATO intervention in Afghanistan was indeed under color of its mutual defense mission, a response to the 9/11 attack on the U.S. Obviously, sticking around for 20 years was not in the original plan. How the U.S., and the alliance, got sucked into that futile endeavor will be a life's work for some historians. The Libyan intervention is a complicated story. It was not originally a NATO operation, but it was authorized by the UN Security Council because of purported intelligence that a massacre of civilians was imminent. This was ultimately determined to have been false. NATO took over only after the operation had gone awry, because some of its member states believed that would provide more responsible leadership, and under NATO auspices the operation ended. I would prefer that NATO be unnecessary, but clearly right now it isn't. Whether expanding the alliance eastward was wise is debatable, but it's what the new member states wanted.
13 comments:
Much as I appreciate your honesty vis a vis american "exceptionalism" this all begs the question: is NATO's existence a cause of the current shit-storm?
Thanks for the historical context.
Well, seriously. The USSR tried to join NATO in 1955, was rejected (dirty commies!) and went on to form the warsaw pact. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Russia tried again to join NATO and was rejected, with Bubba proposing the unbelievably patronizing Partnership For Peace as an alternative. NATO then goes on to (1) disintegrate Yugoslavia despite UN and Russian objection, (2) invade and occupy Afghanistan for 20 years, and (3) bomb Libya into a failed state with open slave markets.
During all this NATO keeps expanding eastward, now having artillery in range of St Petersburg, despite James Baker having promised Gorbachev that NATO wouldn't move east of the reunited Germany. They screamed about Poland, about Latvia, about Romania, about every every tiny country in between. Our response to all these was something like "Calm down, little lady, it'll be okay." Strangely, the Russian government never found that comforting.
Ukraine has been a "future member" for a while now, something the Russian government has always maintained was a red line. I wholly despise the term, holding there should be no absolutes in international affairs, but there it is. NATO is fundamentally a military alliance hostile to Russia, the response seems obvious.
Is this invasion "right" or whatever? No, but that's not the relevant criteria for nation-states. The international system is anarchic; there is no governing authority and every state must look out for itself. Ask yourself: if Mexico announced a security agreement with the PRC that put 5-10 PLA divisions on our southern border, how would the american state and government react?
A couple of fact checks are in order. NATO most certainly did not disintegrate Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia disintegrated itself. NATO intervened in an already existing civil war to try to prevent massacres, which happened anyway. Russia has never qualified for NATO membership. NATO did not initiate the intervention in Libya, but tried to clean it up. NATO had nothing to do with Putin invading Ukraine, if anything obviously it should have given him pause. He wants to restore the Russian empire, that has always been his objective. And that's why he didn't like the eastward expansion, because it stood to thwart his plans. In other words, I think you have this backwards.
I respect your reason, estemado Cervantes, but you need to stop reading the american press.
1. The Yugoslav civil war was not inherently leading to disintegration and the UN was trying desperately to prevent it. The NATO bombing and occupation made that a certainty, something the Russians kept objecting to. I have worked with people who helped sell it to you.
2. Libya was america's idea because, for some reason, we can't let go of a grudge. The UN initially authorized the intervention, then backed out with better information. NATO took over because otherwise it simply would not have happened and bringing down the Libyan government was the goal.
3. There was no legal case for either the american invasion of Afghanistan or NATO calling it an Art 5 action. Harboring a fugitive, especially when trying to negotiate a third-party handover, is not casus belli. Moreover, not one Afghani was involved in the 9/11 attack.
What this all adds up to is that NATO has ceased to be a "defensive" alliance and has morphed into a police force for the "liberal order" of which The Blob is so enamored.
There is no genuine formal qualification for NATO; like all security alliances it is based entirely on strategic utility. It was created as an anti-Soviet alliance and has worked strenuously to maintain that as anti-Russian since the 90's. If the goal was really European peace the surest path would have been a pan-european defensive alliance. That didn't happen because america's so-called foreign policy could tolerate neither a large counterweight within the alliance nor it's (quite logical) dissolution.
Now we are told that this has nothing to do with NATO, despite the fact that Russia has opposed this expansion with increasing intensity for more than 20 years. This would be hilarious if it were not so dangerous. No one who isn't a member wants NATO next door. No one. The idea that Putin is a revanchist is equally laughable and equally disastrous: his only ideology is personal gain, something that has been a clear through line in his actions since he was a St Petersburg mob boss.
Have you ever noticed how anyone who opposes us is either crazy, the next Hitler, or both? No one we disagree with is ever permitted rational motives that can be negotiated with. The Iranian mullahs want to nuke Israel. The NK government is made of crazy people. Hussein was the Hitler of Mesopotamia. Bashar al Assad is a brutal dictator bent on exterminating the Syrian sunni. Domino theory. They do this to literally everyone who opposes US foreign policy programs. You're an intelligent man, estemado Cervantes; this consistent vilification should give you pause.
Lastly, I have noticed that this is similar to the white american liberal's dismissal of the R-party base as motivated entirely by racism. In both cases the enemy is irredeemable, irrational, and beyond talking to. This has the clear, singular benefit of relieving the liberal//blob of any responsibility to question its own actions or actually listen to what The Other has to say. This kind of thinking appears to provide them with the short-term comforts of moral validation and without action, but in the long run is proving disastrous.
Sorry, but in this case you've just flat out got your facts wrong. Yugoslavia broke up and started fighting inter-ethnic wars long before NATO go involved. Slovenia seceded in 1991, Croatia in 1990 whereupon the Serbs seceded from Croatia, followed by a 5 year war called the Croatian War of Independence. Bosnia and Herzegovina seceded in 1992, followed by the three year Bosnian war and on and on and on. NATO launched some air strikes in 1995 to protect Bosniaks from Bosnian Serbs, but did not intervene further until 1999, in Kosovo. Yugoslavia had long since ceased to exist.
As for Afghanistan, the U.S. did indeed try to negotiate with the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, and they refused. Whether you think the response was proportionate, the world thought that the original intervention was proper. Again, sticking around for 20 years obviously was not.
If Putin is acting only in his own self interest, he sure as hell fucked up on this one. And neither the U.S. nor NATO attacked Assad, or Iran, or North Korea so what do they have to do with anything? Russia, on the other hand, bombed Syrian cities into rubble on Assad's behalf.
Yugoslavia: I may be wrong on specifics and the issue is complicated, but the important point is that there was no self defense issue for NATO.
Afghanistan: The Taliban tried to negotiate a handover on on 14 Oct 2001 and their overtures were rejected by Bush. This wasn't in secret. Even of not, there was no self defense issue for NATO.
Libya: ???
Iran: We've been murdering scientists and funding terrorists there for more than a decade, to say nothing of assassinating their CG SOCOM. In Syria we supplied arms to IS and AQ, who went on to murder and terrorize hundreds of thousands, which in turn necessitated russian intervention. Talk to an actual Syrian refuge; most are happy the government prevailed.
But none of that is really the issue. We demonize (and often medicalize) everyone who doesn't assent to the american global program. We have labled as "crazy and unreachable" every leader we don't like. Whether or not we destroy their country is irrelevant, the basic point is that all or opponents are Hitler 2.0
If you met one asshole today, you met an asshole. If you met a dozen assholes today, you're the asshole. Somehow, america has a magical gift for meeting assholes. The motivated reasoning of imperial powers (past and present) is not a valid standard for anything whatsoever.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5
I'm not sure how some of this is relevant -- I thought we were talking about NATO. But I still need to set the record straight on a couple of issues. You can read about the breakup of Yugoslavia here, which actually occurred in 1992 but resulted in a series of conflicts for ten years thereafter. NATO merits only a passing mention in this story, but the rationale for its (very limited) involvement, long after Yugoslavia had broken up, was to protect civilian populations from genocide.
The assassinations and other interference in Iran are the work of Israel, not the United States. There is certainly hypocrisy in the way the U.S. tolerates this.
In Syria, the U.S. did provide material aid to some groups that turned out to be Islamists, but this was an intelligence failure, obviously unintentional since it was the goal of the U.S. to eradicate IS and al Qaeda. The U.S. provided support to Kurdish fighters, the Iraqi army and yes, even militias linked to Iran to accomplish this, which it largely did. The Russian intervention began long before this and it was because of a widespread revolt against the Assad regime. And I have talked to Syrian refugees and I can assure you, you are very mistaken. If they are glad the government prevailed, why haven't they gone back?
"We" don't demonize everybody who doesn't assent to the American global program. Assad, Quadhafi, Saddam Hussein, really were or are psychopathic tyrants who terrorized their own populations and ruled by means of brutal oppression. These are real assholes. So is Vladimir Putin. It's a real phenomenon. People may draw various conclusions about the proper response but the fact is not debatable.
I should add that the NATO mission in Afghanistan didn't begin until August 2003; NATO was not involved in the original invasion. NATO was charged by the UN Security Council with leading the so-called International Assistance Force which was supposed to "create the conditions whereby the Afghan government could exercise its authority throughout the country and build the capacity of the Afghan national security forces, including in the fight against international terrorism." NATO was not involved in dislodging the Taliban government.
Estemado Cervantes, you have a disturbing ability to compartmentalize information to the point of obscuring the patterns which really matter. Beyond that, I am astonished by how readily you accept the state dept and securacracy narrative on these things.
We can go back and forth on the details - and aside from Yugoslavia you're plain wrong on almost all of them - but that changes nothing fundamental. Whether we attack a country or not, the point is that we pump everyone up as Hitler 2.0 if they disagree with any part of the US program. I can lay down for you miles of facts about Saddam pre 1980, about Qaddafi, about Assad. In every case they were better than the alternatives and we knew that going in.
One glaring example: The Syrian civil war would have petered out by late 2012 if we hadn't started shipping in arms. By 2013 all the "moderate syrian rebels" had sold those weapons to AQ/IS groups and decamped to europe and (ex Kurds) it was all jihadis after that. The russians showed up in 2015. The CIA knowingly supplied the jihadis because, to them, Shia is the ultimate evil. That these people would have murdered perhaps a million more Syrians if they took power was never considered an issue. I personally know SF people who deliberately mistrained folks the CIA sent to them because everyone knew they were jihadis.
Most world leaders are unpopular with much of the population, many incredibly brutal in maintaining control. That doesn't make them either psychopaths or Hitler. We're allied with the two of the three worst regimes on earth and have a long history of getting along just fine with monsters. Don't you ever find it odd, though, that the demons we see are always the one's who don't want to go along with the neoliberal, resource extraction regime? We've laid siege to Venezuela because it has the world's largest lithium deposit and won't sell at the prices we dictate.
The world only generates so many Hitlers over time, perhaps one in 500 years. Somehow, everyone who won't agree to immiseration for his countrymen turns out to be another one.
Which leads us to Russia and Ukraine today. Nothing Putin has ever done indicates psychopathy, merely ruthlessness. We helped him replace Yeltsin because of that but since became upset that he wouldn't agree to rule a declining petrostate with no security power. Nothing he has ever done indicates the anschluss nonsense the blob is currently peddling.
I'm extremely agitated about current events. Hence this rant:
NATO and the US clearly have no stomach for war. We stand by and wring our hands while we watch Russia murder a country of 40 million. Russia has nothing to fear from either of us as long as it keeps its hands to itself.
As I understand it, Nazi Germany overstepped when it invaded Poland in 1939, and both France and England declared war on Germany. This was 21 years after the Great War, which exhausted both countries.
This is Russia's 3rd or 4th attack on a population of another country, each of which was horrifying. It has certainly caused more harm to others than Germany did in 1939, albeit more slowly. Yet we hold back. Yes, there is minuscule chance of triggering a nuclear exchange, but Putin isn't insane. There'd be nothing in Russia worth appropriating after Armageddon.
The US and NATO could convince at least 10 other nations to declare war on any "invasion of Ukraine", regardless of origin, and Putin would then have to do the only reasonable thing and go home.
I hate war, and I realize that its impossible to imagine its horror without having experienced it, but the horror is already here. It is likely to happen again if no one draws a bright line that cannot be crossed. China, for example, is explicit about absorbing Taiwan, and it will be an order of magnitude harder to stop it if Russia succeeds with this crude and naked aggression.
"Nothing he has ever done indicates the anschluss nonsense the blob is currently peddling." Mo that is absolutely ridiculous, he invaded Georgia, Crimea and now Ukraine. Have you been asleep for the past decade?
Your history of the Syrian civil war is 100% bunk. You seem to have been reading Russian propaganda. It's too wrong to bother trying to rebut it. If you keep posting such crap you'll be banned, sorry.
And yes, the U.S. is happy to cozy up to some bad people. That's true but rather beside the point.
Hitler, Schmitler. To be a Bush. a Trump or a Pyooteen is to be effectively insane as part of an emotionally stunted, perspective-less and Inherently suicidal political worldview and practice that’s testosterone-based.
Cervantes, why would you want to ban Mo when he seems to have quite a bit of personal experience and seemingly classified information at his disposal? Not to mention the fact that he willingly engages in dialogue. What’s the point in having a blog if you’re not going to continue to engage in dialogue with rational voices? The fact that you do not agree with them is the whole point.
Our disparate experiences lead to diverging perspectives. That’s just how it is. I’m all in favor of you banning nudniks and cranks, but that’s not how I see Mo. Like I said, he seems to have a hell of a lot of knowledge and experience.
I agree with Chuckie that it’s time to engage the world against Ptooteen. I’ve said this for years and I’ll say it again: Yes, it is time to move past war, but I do not see why we can’t have all of the militaries in the world in a single UN force that goes into places like Syria and Russia where functionally insane leaders — call them ruthless if you want, Mo, the end result is the same — and remove them from power to keep peace in a globally connected world. As Cervantes has pointed out, in this globally interconnected world everything that happens in one place affects everyplace else. Just look at Covid.
The age-old problems of powerlust and tyranny aren’t going to disappear, and if we’re going to survive as a species, we need to start dealing with it. There is no Superman; there are no Fantastic Four, and the Marvel superheroes are bullshit.
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