After a history of U.S. bullying and humiliation — from a broken promise not to expand NATO to deceit over Minsk — it can’t be assumed Moscow is bluffing when it warns of nuclear war.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
In his momentous speech at American University in Washington 61 years ago, in which he controversially sought peace with Soviet Russia and an end to the Cold War, President John F. Kennedy said:
“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
Twenty-eight years later, the Bill Clinton administration and every U.S. administration since, culminating in perhaps the most reckless, has proven the bankruptcy of U.S. policy by doing the exact opposite of what Kennedy advised, namely displaying a determination to humiliate and bully nuclear-armed Russia.
Today that most frightening moment has arrived, one dreaded by generations. The United States on Monday continued to provoke Russia with American and British missile attacks on Russian soil fired from a third country with American and British personnel, ignoring Moscow’s unequivocally clear warning that this could lead to nuclear conflict.
By firing directly into Russia with its ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles, the U.S. and U.K., which Russia has not attacked, have given Moscow “a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.”
Beginning at the End of the Cold War
The humiliation of Russia began with the end of the Cold War that Kennedy had sought, but not on the terms he envisioned. Despite George H.W. Bush’s vow not to engage in triumphalism, that was in full swing once Clinton took power.
Wall Street and U.S. corporate carpetbaggers moved into the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, eyed its enormous natural resources, asset-stripped the formerly state-owned industries, enriched themselves, gave rise to oligarchs and impoverished the Russian, Ukrainian and other former Soviet peoples. The humiliation intensified with the decision in the nineties to expand NATO eastward despite a promise made to the last Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in exchange for reunifying Germany.
Even Washington’s man in the Kremlin, Boris Yeltsin, at first objected to NATO expansion, while Sen. Joe Biden supported it though he knew it would provoke Russian hostility.
After eight years of U.S. and Wall Street dominance, Vladimir Putin became president of Russia on New Year’s Eve 1999. He sought friendship with the West. But in 2000 Clinton humiliated him when he refused within hours Putin’s request for Russia to join NATO.
Russia sought to be welcomed into the rest of the world when the Cold War ended, but the U.S. “tricked us,” Putin said. It could not respect Russia’s independence when there was so much money to be made — and still to be made.
Putin then closed the door on Western interlopers in order to restore Russian sovereignty and dignity, ultimately angering Washington and Wall Street. This process didn’t occur in independent Ukraine, which remained subject to Western domination.
On Feb. 10, 2007, an aggrieved Putin gave a Munich Security Conference speech in which he condemned U.S. aggressive unilateralism, saying, “One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”
But he focused particularly on NATO expansion eastward. He said:
“We have the right to ask: against whom is this [NATO] expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”
Putin speaking at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. (Munich Security Conference/Wikimedia Commons)
Putin spoke three years after the Baltic States, former Soviet republics bordering on Russia, joined the Western Alliance. The West humiliated Putin and Russia by ignoring its legitimate concerns, when in 2008, just a year after his speech, NATO said Ukraine and Georgia would become members. Four other former Warsaw Pact states then joined in 2009.
William Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, and presently C.I.A. director, warned in a cable to Washington, revealed by WikiLeaks, that,
“Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”
In November 2009 the West again humbled Russia by rejecting out of hand its proposed new security arrangement in Europe. Moscow released a draft proposal for a security architecture the Kremlin said should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
In 2014, the United States pushed the issue in Ukraine by organizing a coup, stoking what Burns had said were “fears” that “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”
The U.S.-installed government attacked the breakaway Donbass region, which defended its democratic rights against the coup. Civil war ensued as Burns warned. Russia worked out with Europe a peace formula, the Minsk accords, that would keep an autonomous Donbass inside the Ukrainian state. They were endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.
But they failed. In December 2022, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel told us why. She essentially admitted that the West had deceived Russia into thinking it had agreed to peace when instead NATO bought time to arm and train Ukraine for war against Russia. It was another outright humiliation of Moscow, which was “played” as Putin would say.
All this history is hidden to Western publics who only see Russia invading Ukraine as an isolated event.
Going to War in Ukraine
A building burns in Bakhmut City, Sept. 15, 2022. (Ministry of Defense of Ukraine)
On the night in February 2022 he announced Russia’s intervention into the Ukrainian civil war, Putin spoke of the way the West repeatedly humiliated Russia by ignoring its legitimate security concerns. He gave what Russia sees as the existential threat from NATO’s expansion as the main reason for the military intervention.
Russia had clearly had enough of 30 years of America’s reckless condescension. Putin told the world:
“Our biggest concerns and worries, [are] the fundamental threats which irresponsible Western politicians created for Russia consistently, rudely and unceremoniously from year to year. I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border.
It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.
Why is this happening? Where did this insolent manner of talking down from the height of their exceptionalism, infallibility and all-permissiveness come from? What is the explanation for this contemptuous and disdainful attitude to our interests and absolutely legitimate demands?”
Putin said the Americans had “played” Russia in lying about NATO expansion. He referred to
“promises not to expand NATO eastwards even by an inch. To reiterate: they have deceived us, or, to put it simply, they have played us. Sure, one often hears that politics is a dirty business. It could be, but it shouldn’t be as dirty as it is now, not to such an extent. This type of con-artist behaviour is contrary not only to the principles of international relations but also and above all to the generally accepted norms of morality and ethics.”
Putin said Russia had long wanted to cooperate with the West. “Those who aspire to global dominance have publicly designated Russia as their enemy. They did so with impunity. Make no mistake, they had no reason to act this way,” he said.
The collapse of the Soviet Union had led to a redivision of the world, he said, and a change to international law and norms. New rules were needed but instead of achieving this “… we saw a state of euphoria created by the feeling of absolute superiority, a kind of modern absolutism coupled with the low cultural standards and arrogance of those who formulated and pushed through decisions that suited only themselves.”
After nearly three years now of major conflict in Ukraine, it is the United States, Europe and especially Joe Biden that face humiliation.
Russia has won the war: economic, information (except in the West), and on the ground. Biden will limp to the Jan. 20 finish line still vowing that Ukraine can win. However he said he decided to allow the U.S. to attack Russia from Ukrainian territory to help Ukraine hold on to enough Russian territory it seized in Kursk over the summer to trade at cessation of hostilities talks. In other words, he must know that Ukraine has lost.
But this has not been a war to defend Ukraine. It has been a war to overthrow Russia’s leader, as Biden admitted, and to humiliate Russia back into its 1990s servitude, a war that still goes on.
In his speech, Kennedy sought world peace. He asked:
“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”
Biden and other Western leaders have invested too much of their pride, their credibility and their citizen’s money into trying to use “American weapons of war” to enforce a Pax Americana on Russia. They are forcing a choice on Moscow of either a humiliating retreat or nuclear war.
Just how far do they think they can push Russia this time?
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.