RUSSIA DELENDA: COMMENTARIES ON THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR (2)

 The aim of this article is to prove that the current enemity with Russia is the deliberate product of the USA government. In order to do that we will examine the two attempts made by the former Soviet Union and then by Russia to join NATO. Twice rejected by the West, USA and allies have cornered a nation against its will into a position where the only chance for survival has been the adoption of an equally fierce and ambitious policy to that of NATO. Putin's success is and has been the making of a world that somehow ressembles that of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union played a significant role as an international actor. Having won the Cold War, USA pushed unnecesarely (this is the point of this article) Russia to adopt its current position.

Alejandro Colete Moya, 02/05/2022

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev

The creation of two rival blocks (NATO and the WTO, Warsaw Treaty Organization) is perhaps the most dramatic outcome of the WWII. It created a lasting rivalry that would eventually made the rest of the world little more than a chess board where the two superpowers would play. But this enemity was naturally not begotten overnight. Both the West and the Soviet Union had reasons to be enemies: they were clearly ideological foes. USA and allies deemed the communists as a threat. The USSR considered, on the other hand, that the West was the land where the next step of the "revolution" had to take place. Both blocks deemed it necessary to expand: USA wanted to prevent any other country to embrace any sort of revolution, and in order to achieve this goal USA government was ready to intervene any country that dared to cross the line. The record of USA interventions all over the planet bears witness to this country's readiness to take action. USSR, on the other hand, was equally ready to intervene as well, as it did many times until its downfall (like in Korea, Hungary and Afghanistan). This conflict, one could argue, was unavoidable: the ideological divergences and each country's final goals made peace impossible. But another framework could have made things way different, and this we will examine today. USSR was ready to join NATO, and it was willing to so because the Soviet government understood that no real peace could be achieved in Europe (or the world to that effect) without the two superpowers belonging to a security organization. USSR original plan was not to join NATO but to create what was called a "General European Treaty" which would include USA as well, but since NATO was already there, USSR just declared its intention to joint the existing institution. We will talk about this with more detail in a moment. Now, NATO rejecting or rather dismissing USSR's request for joining the organization is natural, considering the enemity. Although I personally believe this to be a huge mistake: either USSR should have been allowed to join NATO or the Soviet dream of a "General European Treaty" should have been met, but neither came to be -- this is the first mistake. WTO (founded in 1955) is a direct response to NATO's dismissal: the USSR asked for joining April 1954. But again, I can understand the mistrust between the countries. But once USSR was dismantled and the Russian Federation came into being, what was the purpose of dismissing Russian's interest in joining NATO? The West won the war, why instead of taking the victory as an opportunity to forge new alliances, NATO decided to once again dismiss Russia (which did not pose a threat at the moment)?

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was born in April 1949. The treaty doesn't mention USSR or the communist ideology at all, but the purpose was clear: the western countries that fought together in WWII would agree to keep that military cooperation ongoing. The main signataries were USA, UK, France and the Benelux countries. The UK and France had already signed a treaty (Dunkirk Treaty, 1947) that was later expanded to include the Benelux countries in 1948. The idea of USA joining this kind of military alliance was Truman's idea. What it is called today the Truman Doctrine is what shaped USA's and NATO's foreign policy during the Cold War and, sadly, beyond the Cold War. Truman insisted that help should be provided to any country under the threat of communism. NATO was only one of the meassures taken during his administration in order to contain communist ideology (the Greek Civil War and the Turkish Straits crisis are other examples of the Truman Doctrine in practice). Another side of the policy in action can be seen in the Marshall Plan or ERP (European Recovery Program), which meant basically that the countries devastated by the WWII would receive financial help on the condition that those countries would implement certain meassures (among them modernisation of the industries, but also dissolution of some regulations). The main beneficiares of the program were France, UK, Italy and Western Germany. By adhering to the Marshall Plan, USA goverment was making sure that communist ideology would be contained in Europe. What I mean by all this is that, when the Soviet proposal of joining NATO came to the desks of the french and the american government in 1954, there were clear grounds as for its rejection. NATO was an organization created with the purpose of contain communism. The letter of the request [available here: https://www.nato.int/60years/doc/5-Soviet-Union-s-request-to-join%20NATO/Soviet%20request%20English.pdf ] is worth reading. I think the Soviet Union had a point in stressing the need for a bilateral security organization:

It must not be overlooked that both the First and Second World Wars were preceded by the establishment of antagonistic military groups of countries and the splitting of Europe into two hostile camps. Nor must we forget the particularly dangerous role of Geman militarism in such military groups and in provoking the First and Second World Wars. Al1 this underscores how important it is to offset the policy of forning antagonistic military groups of countries with a policy of affective cooperation on the part of all the European countries for the sake of maintaing and promoting peace.

Whether NATO was right or wrong in rejecting the Soviet request might be subject of debate, but if the USSR was not to join NATO, then they should have accepted the plan of creating a bilateral security organization, as the letter suggests. The letter very much predicts of the future of the Cold War, as it warns about an increasing escalation when "antagonistic military groups" are enforced. How the following decades would have looked like if such a bilateral organization had been created remains a mystery, but it is my personal believe that such an organization could have at least prevented the dramatic escalation of the Cold War between 1954-1962, period in which a very expensive arms race took place --not to talk about how the Middle East, Africa and South America had become the main scenarios of the actual fighting (the Congo Crisis, the Cuban Revolution and the Suez Crisis being perhaps the highlights of the respective regions).

This leads is us the proposal made by Putin, although the idea was already in Yeltsin --he was indeed the first one who complained about the speed of NATO's expansion, which he reluctantly accepted very likely in order to open the door for Russia itself to join, which never happened. NATO has expanded eastwards almost to the very doors of Russia and never accepted Russia as a member, although Putin told Clinton early in his presidency that he wanted Russia to join NATO. The problem, as the russian journalist Vladimir Pozner has put it, was how Russia was to interpret USA's approach. NATO seemed very interested in having all these countries in NATO but not Russia. The USA has been building up military bases all over Europe and the Middle East, in what looks like an attempt to surround Russia (as well as other countries): USA has now forces in Germany, Poland, Turkey, Romania, Kosovo, Syria, Israel, Iraq, South Korea and Japan (only to mention the ones close to Russia). How couldn't Russia feel threatened? USA government has again and again claimed that NATO is not hostile to Russia, and yet they would stop establishing military bases all across Europe and the Middle East. This is definitely not the way to prove lack of military ambitions, quite the contrary, it seems to me that those bases are the materialization of those ambitions. I'm not saying now that the USA built up these military bases abroad with conquering purposes (that would be subject of an entirely different article), what I'm trying to convey is that if we take a moment to see all this military expansion from Russia's perspective, it does not look good. Russia was defeated, its economy in weak and recovering still from the fall of the Soviet Regime, and the country that defeated you is now building up military bases on your nose and having all your former allies joining the very alliance that was born with the sole purpose of meeting your demise. That's the point of view of Russia. When the USSR planned to bring those missiles to Cuba in 1962, the USA government said a clear "no, we don't want those missiles pointing at us in Cuba", and the USSR brought those missiles back. But the opposite of that has in fact happened despite Russia's legitimate objections.

Bill Clinton himself has talked about this in a recent article published in The Atlantic less than a month a ago (April 7th of 2022, "I tried to put Russia in another path"), in what seems to be a yet another indulging tale of American heroism. I guess Bush tried to put Iraq and Afghanistan in another path, and I bet Eisenhower wanted to put Iran in another path as well. It's funny to see all these administrations endeavouring so much in putting countries in another path, for those paths to be later on blown up into pieces (maybe we are to ask: did Yeltsin and Putin forsee the kind of path awaiting for Russia?). Bill Clinton's arguments raise some questions. The very opening of the text is almost laughable:

First of all: how exactly was Clinton prepearing for the worst, when he himself with his policy was creating that worse? If the policy is "let's work hard in order for Russia not devolve into ultranationalism", why corner Russia expanding NATO up to its very doors? If you need to prepear for the worst (and I can understand that Clinton had you, Russia after all has Nuclear missiles), then arm NATO to the teeth. By the fall of the Soviet Union, USA already had military bases in Turkey, Japan and West Germany, why expand NATO to include former Warsaw Pact members, couldn't Clinton forsee that this would piss off the russians? This administration was either incompetent or evil. Either they wanted to corner Russia and piss its people off, or they cabinet was manned with donkeys (blink blink). In a more serious tone: how it is possible that after all the failures of American foreign policy in the Middle East and South America up to the early 2000's these administrations keep commiting the same mistakes over and over. The Israel-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades now, haven't they learnt that escalating the conflict militarily only escalates further the tensions? Does anybody with regular emotions and empathy (a normal human being) really think that building up settlements and military bases in legitimate palestinian territory won't piss off palestinians? Everybody is right in prepearing for the worst, but maybe try not to trigger off the worst yourself by provoking the very people you are trying to befriend or get along with.

I understand the word "democracy" but I don't know what Clinton means by "cooperation" here. Actually I don't understand what he means by "democracy" here either. Clinton didn't seem very bothered by the fact that Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian state of the worst kind possible, and Saudi Arabia "cooperates" I take it. So according to this text, Clinton wanted Russia to be absolutely submissive, on its knees and surrounded by NATO forces in case it dared to stand up, or am I reading this text wrong? When the Soviet Union fell, there came the problem about the economy: Russia had had for almost a century a planned economy and now was entering the world of the free market. Transitions to free market economy was already a thing, in fact there's a whole protocol called "Washinton Consensus": a reform package designed by John Williamson in 1989 for developing contries. Point 8 of this set of prescriptions is the privatization of state enterprises. Note that in a socialist society these are owned and run by the government. Well, when the Russian Federation came into existence the state had to privatize all run-by-the-state enterprises if it was to adhere to the Washinton Consensus (which it did because Russia was opened at these kind of reforms). I'll let the reader imagine who came to buy these companies: big American firms. The Russian government had two choices here: either you let all public services be owned and run by American business (and get a lot of money in exchange), or you sell these state enterprises so that they be owned and run buy some russians that neither pay as good nor know really how to run them as efficently. Russia opted for the second choice, and that's how the "oligarchs" came into being.  I'm not saying that Russia did right, but it was definitely a safer choice. Look at Iraq: after the 2003 USA government quite literally forced the Iraqi government to privatize all state enterprises. Guess who were the lucky ones who took over most of the oil: ExxonMobile, BP, Shell, Emerson... The names don't sound very arabic. [https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2012/1/7/western-oil-firms-remain-as-us-exits-iraq] [https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168-general/34828.html] Is this what Clinton meant by cooperation? This is an honest question, I really and seriously do NOT know what Clinton means by cooperation.

I'm glad there were people with common sense in USA, a pity there were not in power.

This is the moment when Clinton stops being an incompetent idiot and becomes a monster. First of all, he is writing the past retrospectively, that is, with the benefit of knowing what happened after his policies affected Russia. Putin has indeed (in time) re-create a version of its 18th-century empire --but this happened after it was cornered by NATO, after it had to prevent American corporations from owning and running all state enterprises. Putin didn't invade Crimea in 2001, it did so in 2014. In the Munich Securuty Conference in 2007 Putin criticized how uncontained and unaccountable USA was. And please notice, 2007 (after the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan). Could anybody not officially aligned with NATO feel safe? As journalist Vladimir Pozner puts it: NATO and USA foreigned policy created Putin. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ&t=4816s]. Second, this is blaming the victim. He literally blaming Russia for an evolution that, as it has been established, was caused by American policies. This is the equivalent of "if you wear so short a skirt, you will sure get raped", because the blame is naturally on the woman who dears to wear a tight dress or a short skirt, not the poor men. The same applies here: USA is not to blame or to be held accountable for surrounding Russia with military bases, invading countries at whimp and invite all its former allies to join the very organization whose core mission was to fight you. No. It's Russia's fault, naturally.

Now I'm forced to ask again: what for? I really mean it: was there really any need for the USA to behave like this at all?