The decision to go to war was Russia's, and Russia bears ultimate responsibility for what happens now. But that does not absolve the West of its strategic incompetence and complacency, and it does not mean the United States and its allies are guiltless in all of this.
At multiple points leading up to the current crisis, there were ways for the United States and Europe to create off-ramps for both Moscow and Kyiv, to shepherd a negotiated settlement so that both sides got a minimum of what they needed, and some of what they wanted.
What might that have looked like? For Moscow, a recognition of its strategic claim on Crimea and the port of Sevastopol as the home of its Black Sea Fleet. For Kyiv, the promise of political independence and greater integration with Europe in exchange for territorial concessions.
The West should have also considered the folly and recklessness of floating the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine, something no serious person ever thought Russia would accept without going to war to prevent it. And yet as far back as 2008, the United States openly discussed the possibility of Ukraine's membership in NATO, even as Kyiv still claimed sovereignty over Russia's most important naval base in Sevastopol. Under these conditions, the idea of Ukraine joining NATO was preposterous.
Instead, for years now the West has encouraged Ukraine to take a hard line on Russia, with false promises that the U.S. and NATO would stand up to Moscow and defend Ukraine when it came down to it, or that Ukraine would become a NATO member and thus secure its untenable borders.
As the political scientist John Mearsheimer argued back in 2016, the West has been leading Ukraine "down the primrose path, and that the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked. ... What we're doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We're encouraging the Ukrainians to think they will ultimately become part of the West, because we will ultimately defeat Putin and we will ultimately get our way, time is on our side."
That encouragement โ false encouragement, as it turns out โ made the Ukrainians unwilling to compromise with Russian or consider Russian demands that were not unreasonable, given the historically unique circumstances of modern Ukraine's borders and the problems those borders have always presented.
What's more, the West's encouragement of Ukraine did not match up with the West's policies toward Moscow. You don't tacitly commit to defending Ukraine from Russia while simultaneously making your nation energy dependent on Russia, as Germany and other European powers have done over the past decade, or flood your financial sector with billions from Russian oligarchs, as London has done.
The Biden administration not only encouraged European energy dependence on Russia (by waiving sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline last May) but substantially contributed to it by reversing the Trump administration's achievement of U.S. energy independence. As my colleague Tristan Justice explains, President Biden's energy policies have taken away the ability of the U.S. and its allies to sanction Russian oil exports, a key source of the Kremlin's wealth:
From Russia, the United States still imports nearly 600,000 barrels of oil every day. In contrast, the Keystone XL Pipeline Biden shut down was supposed to transport 830,000 barrels at peak capacity. Biden didn't sanction the Russian energy sector, because he couldn't have. Trump could have, and probably would have."All of this adds up to an historic failure by the West. For many years, the U.S. and its NATO allies knew that revisionist powers like Russia and China were unhappy with the post-Cold War international order, determined to revise it according to their strategic ambitions. It was up to the West, and especially the United States, to ensure that those attempts at revision did not take the form of all-out war, either on the European continent or in Asia.
Already, though, we see Beijing extending a hand to Moscow, calling for negotiations that could at this point only end with Russia achieving its strategic aims in Ukraine.
Simply put, the West has not done what is necessary to preserve the U.S.-led international order, and now that order is unraveling in real time.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Reader Comments
Wars are engineered.
Wakey Wakey.
Ukraine and its leaders have been too stupid to figure out they were simply being used, like a stinky whore on the street, by the USA and the West. Now they have been thrown under the bus. If they are stupid enough to think the West is going to come to their aid, or help to rebuild their shattered country, they are even stupider than anyone could have believed.
Part of the spoils of war, LG!! The winner gets to dictate that their companies rebuild and their economy flourishes because of rebuilding. Just watch. In the worst case scenario, they simply boldly in plain sight rip off the country's assets like the U.S. is doing stealing Syrian oil
Yes. Zelensky, if counting on Europe, UK, and U.S., was sadly mistaken. Zelensky also should never have started shelling Donetsk and Luhansk. You saw the video from the American living nearby Donetsk recording the shelling and artillery fire days before Russia's invasion? Zelensky was arrogant. He should have negotiated with the regions and granted their independence.
I have no dog in this fight. I agree with scrutinizer that the war has been cleverly started by Banksters and Oligarchial Weapon Technocrats. Klaus is waiting in the wings so that he can come out and read his script ad nauseum again, "See? How unfortunate human beings are!! We need only implant self-replicating graphene systems in humans so that their war impulses can be controlled!!! We told you so!!! Back to your cities! Don't enter the forests, plains, and mountains again...which is preserved forever in a protected Eco-Verse...you heathen humans!!! Eat those bugs like we told you!!"
So, what the Western (especially American) corporations are after is to reduce Russia to the status of the Congo or Indonesia, so they can steal those resources as they have been doing to other countries around the world for 100+ years, instead of paying for them. They know perfectly well this will not happen as long as Putin is in charge, and this is their reason for trying to make him hated. In Russia itself, sadly, the young people under 25 never experienced Russia in the 1990s when the West was "helping" it , and they are the main opposition to Putin inside Russia. Anyone born before 1980 knows what he has done for the country, and support him completely.
As for Halliburton, maybe they will go into Ukraine to "rebuild" it at immense cost to the American taxpayer, but, just like Iraq, if that happens huge money will be spent with little results to show for it. Other, much larger forces are at work right now, and this may never actually happen.
Knowing my own country as well as I do, I believe you are right on target!
Khazariathe Ukraine : [Link] (Clif High)Mentioned at about 25:00.
And here a link supporting this fact (leaving out all the "fact checkers" denying it...) : [Link]
Remember: the average guy under the Kosher.gov....he's the bad guy! Not Putin, it is unfair to take responsibility for your actions and more honest to hinge them on someone else...
Move along now.....
All together now.....in Unity.....
War = Peace
War = Peace
"
"