The crisis offers a reflection of the cold-war mentality and zero-sum game pursued by the US for its own narrow geopolitical gains. The US must realize that the one playing with fire will inevitably get burnt
by Anwar A. Khan
It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I saw enough of it in 1971 when we were battling to establish Bangladesh from the horrific hands of Pakistani army in collusion with Uncle Sam like a rogue state and their local mango-twigs, especially Jamaat-e-Islami mass-murderers - make me look upon it as the sum of all evils – war is unjust.Any war causes Brobdingnagian sufferings and we experienced that hellholepiercingly in 1971.
If we look back in 2014, we find former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger wrote in Washington Post that Ukraine should function as a bridge between the East and the West, rather than becoming "either side's outpost against the other". That insight was ignored by the US-led NATO, which pushed for five major eastward expansions toward Russia, thus leaving Ukraine crisis ready exploded.
John Mearsheimer, the father of the theory of offensive realism in international studies, put forward that the West, especially the US, is principally responsible for disaster in Ukraine. Mearsheimer believes that if there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine... there would be no war in Ukraine.
US-Russia rivalry is the fundamental contributor underlining the worst geopolitical crisis in the new century. For the US, NATO expansion is designed to ensure its "absolute security", but for Russia, it is an issue of life or death.
NATO expansion has always been a sore spot, given the Russian view that this is a Cold War institution that persists as a mode of containment, according to Igor Zevelev, a Russian political scientist at the Wilson Center.
Thomas L. Friedman, an American political commentator and author, wrote in the New York Times that the American choice to expand NATO in 1990s was an "ill-considered decision". He recalled that Bill Perry, former defense secretary in the Clinton administration, in 2016 pointed out that the US should be blamed in the early years of NATO expansion since it led to a "bad direction", making Russians feel "very uncomfortable".
George Frost Kennan, the distinguished US architect of the strategy of containment against the Soviet Union, also expressed his frustration at NATO expansion in 1998, defining it as "the beginning of a new cold war", predicting that Russians "will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies". Kennan could not conceal his disappointment against this "tragic mistake", even saying it "would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves". Unfortunately, Kennan's prediction finally came true.
Mearsheimer advised that the best strategy for Ukraine is to balance between Russia and the West, specifically, to "break off its close relations with the West, especially with the US, and try to accommodate the Russians". As former US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview, "Biden can very easily prevent a war with Russia by guaranteeing that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO." However, people in the diplomatic establishment will never acknowledge this mistake, instead formulating a strategy to blame Russia and exploit the suffering of Ukrainian people.
Throughout this crisis, Ukraine has been a tool for the US to contain Russia. But they should never expect the US and NATO to sincerely offer any serious security guarantee.
The crisis offers a reflection of the cold-war mentality and zero-sum game pursued by the US for its own narrow geopolitical gains. The US must realize that the one playing with fire will inevitably get burnt
With the support of the United States, Ukraine can organise provocations that serve as a pretext for hostilities in the Crimea region. Uncle Sam has actually already turned Ukraine into his colony, which, if desired, can be used as a large military training ground near the Russian borders. But for now, what they did, provoked Russia.
Today, provocative actions continue in the long-suffering Donbas, but on instructions from Washington, Ukrainian militants will immediately switch to another territory.
Ukraine became a failed American colony; modern Ukraine was created as a country for death in the name of American interests.
Russia's foreign policy is notable for its firmness, while Moscow is doing everything possible to reduce the international tension.
Individual states, and primarily the US, allow themselves to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, whether by organising colour revolutions or distributing arrogant instructions on what and how. Any reaction to this, in Russia, is always manifested in the form of retaliatory actions, that is, it is actually a matter of self-defence. If Russia imposes sanctions, these are always retaliatory measures, counter-sanctions. Russia’s external agenda is set on the development of cooperation, not on confrontation, and Putin has once again confirmed this in his address speech.
There is something utterly obscene—as rudely shocking as the front-row viewing of the “Shock and Awe” confabbed on Iraqabout watching the displacement of people and the destruction of innocent lives in real time, on television, without lending a hand.
Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskywho is the toast of the town simply because he did not skedaddle from the mess in which he mired his countryto this ass with ears goes a special award for recklessness. Not fleeing a situation largely of his making does not a hero make. Curiously, Americans have offered Zelensky the coward’s way out, when they ought to have forced him to sit down with his foes.
Granted, America, as British paleolibertarian Sean Gabb quips, is “some kind of zombie apocalypse plus nuclear weapons that might not yet be past its use-by date. It has not won a war against an equally-matched power since it defeated itself in 1865.” However, degraded, the onus is on the USA, the only so-called responsible superpower, to calmly negotiate with Putin on behalf of his innocent, weak victims. Instead, world leaders watch the suffering on TV and bemoan the fate of the sufferers. Both sides are a disgrace and a failure to have brought them thus far.
This is precisely what President Joe Biden should be shamed into doing now: talk to Putin; thrash out a cease-fire, ASAP; haggle for the lives of the population under siege because led by imbeciles…
Ukrainians, for their part, are tireless and wily lobbyists in Washington, way more cunning than their American counterparts. To all intents and purposes, Zelensky, head of the corrupt American client statelet that is Ukraine, had tethered the fate of his country to America, NATO and the EU, constantly trying to bend these foolish and feckless entities to his will; too much of a clown to look out for his countrymen’s safety, rather than his own popularity in the West. …
Having sat out the ‘67 and ‘73 wars in Israeli bomb shelters—one international news reporter still remembers what old-school diplomacy and statesmanship—realpolitik—sounded like. Diplomatic tools like substantive talks, a cease-fire, and an agreement between warring sides, however, have been absent from the repertoire of the two tools, Presidents Biden and Zelensky.
I hate war as only we who had lived it in 1971 can, only as one who saw its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and to save goodness from Satan and Evil.
-The End –
The writer is an independent political analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.
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