No natural defensive borders to protect St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Posted on 05/18/2023 9:12:47 PM PDT by Kazan
An open letter calling for a swift diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine was published on Tuesday in the New York Times. The letter’s 14 signatories consisted mostly of former U.S. military officers and other national security officials, including Jack Matlock, Washington’s former ambassador to the Soviet Union; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat; Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps officer and State Department official; and Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff.
Many are longtime critics of U.S. foreign policy and post-9/11 war policies.
The letter calls the war an “unmitigated disaster” and cautions that “future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war.”
“In diplomacy, one must attempt to see with strategic empathy, seeking to understand one’s adversaries,” according to the letter. “This is not weakness: it is wisdom.”
“Since 2007, Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO’s armed forces on Russian borders were intolerable – just as Russian forces in Mexico or Canada would be intolerable to the U.S. now, or as Soviet missiles in Cuba were in 1962,” the letter reads. “Russia further singled out NATO expansion into Ukraine as especially provocative.”
The missive, which appeared on page 5 of the Times’ print edition, lays out the history of warnings by key U.S. national security officials, politicians, and others about the dangers of NATO expansion in the late 1990s, and again in 2008 when then-U.S. Ambassador to Russia and current CIA director William Burns cautioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice against pushing for NATO membership for Ukraine.
Accompanying the text is a timeline of the deterioration in relations between Moscow and the West that begins in 1990, when Secretary of State James Baker assured Russia that NATO would not expand eastwards, until Russia’s invasion in February of last year.
“NATO expansion, in sum, is a key feature of a militarized U.S. foreign policy characterized by unilateralism featuring regime change and preemptive wars,” according to the letter, which suggests that Washington’s “failed wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan have been two of the results.
President Joe Biden has vowed that Washington will continue to aid Kyiv “as long as it takes.” The letter’s signers fear that this is a recipe for escalation that could result in catastrophe.
“As Dan Ellsberg has warned courageously and unceasingly, we — the world — are at the nuclear brink again, perhaps closer to the edge than ever before. It only requires one step to go over and then our steps end forever,” Wilkerson said in the statement released by the Eisenhower Media Network, which funded the full-page advertisement. “If that’s not sufficient reason for a return to diplomacy, our extinction is at hand; the timing is all that is in question.”
To date, the United States has sent $37 billion worth of military aid to Kyiv. High-level discussions with officials in Moscow have been rare, and a number of other entities, including China, Brazil, and the Pope, have taken on the mantle of pushing for a diplomatic solution.
What Washington’s role will look like going forward is more uncertain, with recent reporting as well as revelations from Pentagon leaks suggesting that the administration will continue supporting Ukraine through the anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces before possibly reassessing, although officials have disputed that narrative.
The letter, entitled “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World,” urges the Biden administration to pivot towards pursuing a negotiated solution to end the war “speedily.”
“This reality is not entirely of our own making, yet it may well be our undoing,” the letter concludes, “unless we dedicate ourselves to forging a diplomatic settlement that stops the killing and defuses tensions.”
So, the U.S. should invade to stop it?
“Since when have the current admin leaders acted in US & citizen interest?”
President Trump acted in our interest.
51 former intelligence officials
where have we seen this before??
LOL
In other words Russia has only been invaded once in the last 100 years, and on that occasion the Nazis would’ve beaten them if the USA and UK hadn’t fought Germany.
So even if we did invade Russia in 1918 (debatable) we saved their asses 25 years later.
NATO contained the Soviet Union but it never did so by attacking Russia.
Putin’s argument is irrational; it’s like saying that the UK should be ready to go to war with France at any moment simply because of Napoleon.
We contained the French at some times, they contained us, but that’s ancient history. The days of colonial war across the English Channel are long gone.
Likewise the Soviet Union contained imperial Europe and NATO contained the Soviet Union, but imperial Europe is no longer a geopolitical reality and neither is the Soviet Union.
NATO still exists, but so does CSTO. It’s not NATO’s fault that Ukraine, Moldova, Poland et al would much rather be in NATO than in CSTO; that’s Putin’s fault.
The Mexico analogy doesn’t really stack up.
If the Soviet Union had parked tanks and missiles along the border BEFORE 1991 then yes of course the USA would respond. The USSR and USA were on opposite sides of the Cold War.
Every other ex USSR and ex Warsaw Pact country can happily play with the USA, either in Europe or in Mexico, without triggering anything.
Why is Russia the only ex USSR founding state that’d trigger the USA? Because Putin is a warmongering fanatic who wants to party like the USSR and Warsaw Pact and Iron Curtain never went away, that’s why. It’s Putin’s regime that’s the problem.
Would Mexico get invaded by the USA just to prevent it from playing a bigger part in a revived Mercosur despite the USA having a deal with Mercosur?! Of course not.
But that was what was in Putin’s head when despite Russia having a trade relationship with the EU and Ukraine having already signed deals with China and Russia, he went apeshit when he heard Yanukovych and Azarov were supporting the negotiations for a trade deal between the EU and Ukraine.
Putin is a nutjob.
Swift diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine? How? Under what terms?
The problem with ending the war in Ukraine is that both sides have utterly incompatible minimum results. The Russian Government still is demanding a minimum of additional Ukrainian Territory (not currently occupied). Ukraine is demanding return of all occupied territories including Crimea. Then there is the modern founding myth of Ukraine where a popular uprising drove the Russian army out.
How much less that those stated goals can either government accept and still stay in power?
Too many mouthy experts but no enough common sense or knowledge of Communism.
Russia did the invading of Ukraine, not the other way round.
Russian paranoia has deep roots, but it’s paranoia.
What type of man prances around wearing tight spandex and women’s high heel shoes? And moves his lips around eager to perform fellatio?
This is what Ukraine calls comedy? What’s next, having Zelensky pull out his Johnson and publicly masturbate? I’m sure that will really garner laughs.
But this is the freak show that Americans are supposed to support with $trillions of our hard earned money. Our treasure, our wealth, our family jewels have to be sacrificed to that filthy heathen country.
Ukraine has been taken over by Washington DC sodomites, and they deserve all the destruction coming to them. /spit
The answer to your rhetorical question is simple - a comedian. And your obsession with male genital imagery raises serious questions of your mental health…
“I bet Raytheon is pissed that we sent the Patriot systems over to Ukraine.”
My first thought. One of the reasons that I opposed our involvement in this war was that the neglect of our military for the past 35 years would finally come to light (after all why have a fully modernized military when you only plan to fight Third World countries?), and therefore our threats around the world, where we actually do have legitimate interests, would be empty.
...and it all happened as I feared. We gave Ukraine HIMARS, and they did well with them, but 6 months later, the Russians have neutralized them (not too smart relying on GPS when fighting a peer-level country, but then it does work in my car, at least). The titanium M777 Howitzers were even worse, barely noticeable on the battlefield.
...and now the Patriot, our meager attempt at trying to match the S300 (not to mention S400, S500, and now S550 which can also take out satellites). The Soviets and then Russians took air defense seriously; we figured it wasn’t needed and we couldn’t find more than a few dollars in our trillion dollar military budgets for it (fighting useless wars in the Middle East and dozens of other places is expensive, by the way).
All it will take is for Putin to nuke a US city and tell Biden to stay out of Russia’s business...
Hmmm. You will need to inform the historians....
“Not one inch. With these words, Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall: if you give up your part of Germany, “
https://www.hoover.org/research/not-one-inch-america-russia-and-making-post-cold-war-stalemate
Putin’s excuse to invade in 2014 had nothing to do with NATO expansion. The claim was Russia was defending ethnic Russians and returning its rightful lands to the fold. The 2022 excuse was that he had to purge Ukraine of neo-nazis. It’s incredible that anyone can spout this nonsense. Putin invaded Ukraine for reasons that had nothing to do with NATO. He invaded to bolster a shrinking population of what he sees as “little Russians”, increase resources from a more hospitable agricultural environment, and shore up its fossil fuel and ore industry with Ukrainian oil fields and mines. The idea that we wouldn’t take kindly to Russian troops in Mexico or Canada is a straw man argument. NATO troops are first and foremost troops of independent, SOVEREIGN nations. NATO is not an independent entity that acts as a single unit. NATO actions are not independent of the individual nations that have chosen and REQUESTED to join with a significant series of steps that have to take before they can even ask to join. When Putin suggest Russia join he wasn’t rebuffed. He refused to accept the process with the excuse that Russia was far too important to follow the process that other nations had to follow. Nor was there any significant chance of Ukraine joining NATO. Both Germany and France made no secret that would not approve and without both Germany and France’s approval, there was no possibility Ukraine could have joined. The NATO excuse was never Putin’s. It was concocted by Russian apologists and is bullshit.
Great post and good summary.
Yet its been Russia with the “serial invasion” of its neighbors for the last 75 years. they started immediately following WW2 (and some say it actually was happening before that - though I’m not aware of what those were... other than... Oh, what we know as Ukraine.
No natural defensive borders to protect St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Only if Putin is cornered and that's possible if he loses Crimea. But we're not there. Yet.
He proposed it. And both Edvard Scheverdnaze and Mikhail Gorbachev turned it down. If you understood anything at all about the USSR at all, you’d understand why they turned it down.
It’d also then be obvious why Bush backpedaled.
The only deal under negotiation at the time was with the USSR (the thing that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were inside).
The Soviet Union got completely abolished in the 1990s, while the specific country called Russia, whose full name was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, became the Russian Federation.
The deal under discussion had to presuppose that the Warsaw Pact would remain intact, and the USSR would also remain intact. Baker MISSPOKE when he pitched a promise that IF THE WARSAW PACT DID COLLAPSE, NATO would not expand towards the USSR.
Gorbachev couldn’t say yes to Baker because that would’ve been tantamount to an open admission from the Supreme Soviet leader that the Soviet Union really could lose the Warsaw Pact.
Bloody hell, how dumb do you have to be to not see why the Soviet Union made damned sure Baker’s pitch never made it into the final signed agreement?!
Scheverdnaze and Gorbachev couldn’t admit on the record that ANY country inside the Warsaw Pact might one day be free to apply to join NATO.
They’ve got eleven time zones to play with. If they want a 500 mile buffer zone, move the bloody capital city. Moscow is safe enough where it is. St Petersburg is nearer to a border but unless Russia is unique in the world in needing a 500 mile DMZ, that’s a safe spot.
Also... Nobody’s invaded Russia in decades.
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