{"id":1507687,"date":"2024-12-13T04:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T09:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1507687"},"modified":"2024-12-13T04:25:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T09:25:00","slug":"provoked-the-long-train-of-abuses-that-culminated-in-the-ukraine-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/provoked-the-long-train-of-abuses-that-culminated-in-the-ukraine-war\/1507687\/","title":{"rendered":"Provoked: The Long Train Of Abuses That Culminated In The Ukraine War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Provoked: The Long Train Of Abuses That Culminated In The Ukraine War<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Carus Michaelangelo via The Mises Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

[Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine<\/a>, by Scott Horton, The Libertarian Institute, 2024; 690 pp.]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA fox knows<\/a>\u00a0many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>Scott Horton is the liberty movement\u2019s foreign policy hedgehog, endeavoring to convince the American public of one essential truth: the folly of war. But within that sphere, Horton is a fox, weaving an encyclopedic knowledge of various conflicts into an elaborate and convincing tapestry that indicts elites, intellectuals, the military-industrial complex, and\u2014with characteristic vitriol\u2014neoconservatives in pushing the US toward unnecessary wars.<\/p>\n

Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine<\/em><\/a>, fits this mold to a tee\u2014not because Horton contorts facts to a preconceived narrative. Rather, because it is often the\u00a0same people<\/em>\u00a0pushing conflict after conflict who, unsurprisingly, resort to the same, well-worn playbook. Horton\u2019s tome is riveting, from beginning to end.<\/strong> Here, I will focus on the early post-Cold War years, since this part of the story is oft-neglected in contemporary debates about the origins of the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n

With the closing of the Cold War, and the USSR dissolving, the US faced a crisis of success: what use is the NATO military alliance without the Soviet enemy to align against? More broadly, what grand strategy should the US adopt now that containing communism was obsolete? For neoconservatives, whose answer post-Cold War was benevolent global hegemony, the solution was to adapt NATO.<\/strong> NATO must gradually absorb more European nations, while leaving Russia out in the cold\u2014contained and encircled, in an even worse position than during the Cold War. NATO must expand its mission to keep European peace and expand Western democracy, or wither on the vine.<\/p>\n

From George H.W. Bush to today, the record meticulously compiled by Horton demonstrates that US and other Western leaders communicated to Russia leaders and officials that NATO would not expand east\u2014and could even allow for\u00a0Russian<\/em>\u00a0membership in NATO. <\/strong>Various efforts like the Partnership for Peace and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe were promoted to foster this impression that Russia would be included in European affairs, alliances, and institutions, rather than these structures aligning against them. All the while, these same US and Western leaders took virtually the opposite positions internally, with the result that the US willfully misled the Russians. The exact internal and external postures waxed and waned over the years, but this ultimate pattern held firm. This was even though, all along, Russian officials warned about how they and the Russian people would react to NATO advancing east. What we see is, in terms with which Americans are well-familiar, \u201ca long train of abuses<\/a>\u00a0and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object.\u201d<\/p>\n

It began with George H.W. Bush, who promised Mikhail Gorbachev, after the fall of the Berlin Wall as the Soviet Union careened towards collapse, that the US\u00a0would not take advantage<\/a>\u00a0of the situation. This was also reflected in a\u00a0NATO resolution<\/a>\u00a0on June 7, 1991. Bush and his advisors promised that NATO would not expand if the Soviet Union would withdraw and allow German reunification. The\u00a01990 settlement<\/a>\u00a0would only specify that the US would not put troops in East Germany, a nuance which Russia hawks have exploited to argue there was no promise not to expand NATO. But this does not fly. Horton asks the rhetorical question: what sense would it make for the Soviet Union to extract a promise not to put troops in East Germany, if the US had a free hand to bring the\u00a0rest of Eastern Europe<\/em>\u00a0into a military alliance? This agreement\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0makes sense on a backdrop of agreeing not to expand NATO.<\/p>\n

The sins of the Clinton years were legion.<\/strong> In the early 90s, the US sent economists from the Harvard Institute of International Development to Russia to enact what came to be called a \u201cshock therapy\u201d economic policy. It was so badly designed and had such poor outcomes that many Russian thought it must be deliberate. Unsurprisingly, this did not dispose ordinary Russians to view the West favorably. Throughout the decade, Clinton and his advisors duplicitously offered Russia promises that a \u201cPartnership for Peace\u201d process would be pursued rather than NATO expansion\u2014and that NATO would lose its military character\u2014all the while planning to expand NATO.<\/p>\n

The Clinton administration was heavily involved in the Balkans wars of Bosnia and Kosovo, which present strong cases against \u201chumanitarian\u201d intervention. The result of Bosnia was that NATO proved itself capable of fulfilling a new mission, while the US solidified itself at the head of European affairs, each of which were necessary for subsequent NATO expansion. Kosovo further solidified NATO\u2019s new role on the continent\u2014even intervening in civil wars\u2014while the bombing campaign against Serbia convinced Russians that the US was an aggressive, ruthless great power, who would violate international rules when it suited them. <\/strong>The US engaged in this aggressive war, in violation of the UN Charter, without approval of the UN Security Council (on which Russia sat). So much for the liberal rules-based international order. The US\u2019s frequent remaking of the rules was a frequent complaint of Russia, including during the Iraq War.<\/p>\n

Moreover, when Russia went to war with break-away Chechnya, Clinton\u2019s CIA and US allies supported Chechen rebels and separatist mujahideen fighters fighting on Chechnya\u2019s side against the Russians, with the goal to disrupt an existing Russian oil pipeline running through Chechnya. <\/strong>This, too, Putin cited when invading Ukraine. (If this were all not bad enough, Horton shows how the Clinton administration supported the bin Ladenite terrorists in the Balkans wars and in Chechnya. Indeed,\u00a0more than half<\/em>\u00a0of the September 11 hijackers were involved in these wars in the Balkans and Chechnya\u2014often both.)<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s rise was itself a\u00a0consequence<\/em>\u00a0of the Clintonian interventions in the 1990s: from the \u201cshock therapy\u201d economic policy, to helping Yeltsin get reelected in 1996, to Kosovo and Chechnya. As Horton points out, ironically, Putin\u00a0invoked<\/a>\u00a0the Kosovo precedent of intervening in a civil war to \u201cprotect\u201d an ethnic minority to justify invading Ukraine. In one stunning example from the Kosovo war, Horton recounted how the Clinton administration ordered the\u00a0bombing of a Serbian TV station<\/a>. These actions still influence Putin\u2019s thoughts about the West today. Putin\u2019s strike on a\u00a0TV tower<\/a>\u00a0in Kiev in February 2022 likely called back to that conflict.<\/p>\n

The NATO-Russia\u00a0Founding Act<\/a>\u00a0of May 1997 was another milestone in US duplicity toward Russia.<\/strong> It assured that NATO would not deploy nuclear weapons or \u201csubstantial\u201d troops to new NATO nations\u2019 territories. Importantly, the Clinton administration misled Russia into thinking the Founding Act would give Russia a genuine role in NATO deliberations\u2014although it would not have a say within the NATO alliance itself\u2014when, in the words of Clinton advisor Strobe Talbott, the US\u2019s view was that \u201call we\u2019re really promising them is monthly meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout Clinton\u2019s term, the Clinton administration fed Russia the lie that claimed NATO\u2019s mission was becoming political, rather than military, <\/strong>so agreeing not to expand NATO would be admitting that NATO\u2019s mission was to contain Russia. He even said he would leave open the possibility of Russia entering NATO. But Horton shows they had no intention to do any of this. To make matters worse, in\u00a0July 1997 NATO and Ukraine signed an agreement<\/a>\u00a0that would provide for training Ukraine\u2019s military and improve their interoperability with NATO, and in\u00a0August 1997 planned a military exercise<\/a>\u00a0involving several former Warsaw Pact states and Soviet republics to simulate US military intervention in an ethnic conflict in Crimea.<\/p>\n

No, this was not all. The US tried to cut out Russia from Caspian Basin oil by refusing to run a pipeline from Azerbaijan through Russia, pushing it to a Western route through Turkey instead. <\/strong>The US also backed the GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) grouping to \u201cspeed European integration and exclude Russia influence from the South Caucasus,\u201d according to Horton, which Russia strongly opposed, calling it an \u201cAxis of Evil\u201d in 2005. The Clinton administration also violated Bush and Gorbachev\u2019s Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe in 1999, incredulously claiming that the \u201cpermanent US military bases in Bulgaria and Romania\u201d were actually just temporary.<\/p>\n

The close of the Clinton years began a wave of \u201ccolor revolutions\u201d in Russia\u2019s backyard. The key thing about these \u201crevolutions\u201d is that they are heavily funded and supported by foreign governments or NGOs, such as George Soros\u2019 groups. Rather than directly or covertly overthrow an existing regime, these organizations operate \u201cabove board,\u201d meaning they avoid specifically endorsing candidates\u2014since that would be illegal\u2014and instead fund and assist groups that promote more generic, non-partisan efforts like \u201cdemocracy.\u201d In context, of course, their activities are geared to \u201cbenefit<\/a>\u00a0. . . a favored candidate or party.\u201d A favorite tactic is using \u201cparallel vote tabulation\u201d or exit polls, which are used to dispute official election results. The dispute typically spills over into\u00a0street demonstrations<\/a>\u00a0with the goal of ousting the ostensible victor.<\/p>\n

The \u201crevolutions\u201d began in Serbia in 2000 with the ousting of Clinton\u2019s b\u00eate noire Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107. <\/strong>As Horton sardonically comments, this culminated in the \u201csacking and burning of the [Serbian] parliament building in what would surely be called a violent insurrection by American Democrats if they had not been behind it.\u201d Numerous other states would be targeted for color revolutions by the US and its Soros-backed NGO allies over the next decades.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, this only begins to scratch the surface of these early, post-Cold War provocations toward Russia that Horton documents, let alone the follies and misdeeds that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency and thereafter. <\/strong>Horton has persuasively made the case that the US provoked Russia over the course of three decades, knowing that Russia would respond with hostility toward NATO expansion. Yet, with reckless abandon, US leaders and officials pushed on, achieving their wildest dreams of NATO expansion and setting their sights on what was always their crown jewel\u2014Ukraine. It did not have to be this way, and it still does not. But time is ticking. Defying expectations, President Biden\u00a0manages to reach<\/a>\u00a0new heights of absurdity<\/a>\u00a0in his\u00a0escalatory policy<\/a>\u00a0toward Russia, ticking off a box on Zelensky\u2019s\u00a0deadly<\/a>\u00a0five-point \u201cpeace\u201d plan. The war cannot end soon enough.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 12\/12\/2024 – 23:25<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/provoked-long-train-abuses-culminated-ukraine-war<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Provoked: The Long Train Of Abuses That Culminated In The Ukraine War Authored by Carus Michaelangelo via The Mises Institute, [Provoked: How Washington Started the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1507688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1507687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1507687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1507688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1507687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1507687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1507687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}