Unfree

I talk about information filtration and the Ukraine war.

I’ll use this piece to talk about information filtration and the Ukraine war. The media has been docile—when it comes to the Ukraine war—to an extraordinarily disturbing degree.

Information Filtration

Regarding foreign policy, it’s interesting to consider two filters that exist when it comes to the information that the public receives. The first has to do with government secrecy—David N. Gibbs has an excellent 1995 article about this topic:

Secrecy And International Relations (1995)

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He writes: the “defining feature of the Internal Threat approach is that the general public is considered the principal target of government secrecy”; the “practical implications of this perspective are disturbing for the researcher”; and if “the Internal Threat approach is correct” then “much of our research is and must be conducted without important or even vital information”.

The second has to do with the media’s institutional structure—the media are free from government coercion but aren’t institutionally free. We often get Orwellian media coverage—for example, there is a clear record that shows that Washington provoked the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the media will constantly refer to the invasion as “unprovoked”. And Gibbs writes in his 1 January 2002 FAIR piece “Forgotten Coverage of Afghan ‘Freedom Fighters’”, which provides an example of Orwellian media coverage: there’s been “a fairly dramatic and Orwellian shift in the tone of public discourse regarding Afghanistan”; “Islamic extremism is now viewed with great hostility”; “in the 1980s U.S. policy strongly supported such extremism”; and “there is scarcely any recognition that a little more than a decade ago” the “U.S. press waxed eloquent about the Afghan ‘freedom fighters’”. Gibbs describes a situation where past coverage was completely erased from awareness—the media proceeded with extreme amnesia.

These two levels of filtration determine what reaches the public and what the public knows—these two levels shape public consciousness. The 1995 article is about actual literal secrecy—that’s the first level. And the 2002 piece is about the Orwellian coverage that our media provides—the media filters out certain information, since the media operates under institutional constraints. The media doesn’t just filter information—the media also assembles facts within an ideological framework—but you can see the stark instances where something is completely unknown that would be right in the spotlight in an unconstrained media.

Was the Invasion Provoked?

The media has obliterated the past regarding what preceded the Ukraine war—this is as Orwellian an erasure as the one that Gibbs describes in his 2002 piece. It’s common to see comments like this in the press:

The magnitude of the Russian gambit is staggering. Whatever Mr. Putin’s ideas on how Ukraine should relate to Russia, whatever his grievances over Western encroachment on what he perceives as Russia’s sphere of influence, whatever his views on Russia’s place in Europe and the world, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign European state is an unprovoked declaration of war on a scale, on a continent and in a century when it was thought to be no longer possible.

This was a war crime—this was an act of aggression. This was a heinous invasion that’s starving millions and might get us all killed. The invasion was completely unjustified—it’s not like the decision to invade could ever be justified morally or legally. But how was it “unprovoked”?

Let me recommend two useful pieces—Bryce Greene’s 4 March 2022 FAIR piece and Gibbs’s 6 February 2022 Truthout piece—that share important information about provocation. You can read the pieces and ask yourself how prominently the information contained in them appears in the media—I think that an institutionally free media would spotlight the record of provocation. Greene starts his piece as follows:

Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”

It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.”

The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine.

That’s true—this “history is important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine”. And Gibbs concludes his own piece as follows:

In undertaking these interventions, the U.S. was laying the groundwork for future conflicts with Russia. If U.S. officials were looking for trouble and seeking to increase global insecurity, they could not have done a better job.

Given all these historical affronts, it should come as no surprise that the Russian people longed for a more authoritarian leader—like Putin—who would stand up to the increasingly distrusted U.S. Despite his authoritarian style, Putin has been inarguably popular and has dominated Russian politics since first coming to power in 2000.

U.S. officials cannot go back in time to correct past mistakes; in all probability, they will never regain Russia’s trust. However, we do have an opportunity to deescalate tensions. The key Russian demand is a firm U.S. guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO. U.S. officials should be open to this demand, as a basis for a full settlement, and should forgo their obsession with relentlessly projecting U.S. power through NATO. Surely this outcome would be better than a new Cold War with a nuclear-armed Russia, which is becoming a serious risk.

Gibbs says that Washington “was laying the groundwork for future conflicts with Russia”. And that US officials “could not have done a better job” if they “were looking for trouble and seeking to increase global insecurity”.

Were US Officials Warned?

US officials were warned about NATO expansion. I recommend that people read (1) Michael MccGwire’s excellent 1998 article about NATO expansion and (2) the 1997 open letter that MccGwire’s article refers to:

Nato Expansion (1998)

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26 June 1997 Open Letter To President Clinton

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Regarding the 1997 open letter, MccGwire writes: “fifty former US senators, cabinet secretaries and ambassadors, as well as US arms control and foreign policy specialists, stated their belief that ‘the current US-led effort to expand NATO…is a policy error of historic importance’”; eminent “and highly respected individuals made up this bipartisan group”; the “five senators included Sam Nunn, a long-standing expert on defence”; “Arthur Hartman and Jack Matlock, ambassadors to Moscow, 1981–7 and 1987–91, were among twelve signatories of that rank”; “Professors Richard Pipes and Marshal Shulman (former members of the National Security Council, but on opposite sides of the US debate on Soviet policy in the 1970–90 period) both signed the letter, as did Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defence in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and Paul Nitze, who was President Reagan’s arms control supremo in the 1980s and a leading member of the hawkish ‘Committee on the Present Danger’ in the 1970s”; and former “NATO Assistant Secretary-General Philip Merrill and logistics chief Maj. Gen. Christian Patte were also among the signatories, as was Admiral Stansfield Turner, former Director of the CIA”. 

And MccGwire writes that the 1997 open letter “was not the first time that experienced professionals had warned against extending NATO eastwards”—in “May 1995, a group of retired senior Foreign Service, State Department, and Department of Defense officials wrote privately to the US Secretary of State expressing concern about a policy that ‘risked endangering the long-term viability of NATO, significantly exacerbating the instability that now exists in the zone that lies between Germany and Russia, and convincing most Russians that the United States and the West [were] attempting to isolate, encircle, and subordinate them, rather than integrating them into a new European system of collective security’”. The 3 May 1995 letter reads: 

May 3, 1995

Dear Mr. Secretary:

We are a group of retired Foreign Service, State Department, and Department of Defense officers who served during the Cold War. We are concerned by the potential consequences of the administration’s policy of promising to extend NATO membership to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. In our view, this policy risks endangering the long-term viability of NATO, significantly exacerbating the instability that now exists in the zone that lies between Germany and Russia, and convincing most Russians that the United States and the West are attempting to isolate, encircle, and subordinate them, rather than integrating them into a new European system of collective security.

At the same time, we are conscious of the desirability of taking reasonable steps to allay the fears of the Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles, who, understandably after their long domination by the Soviet Union, are anxious to find security in some close Western connection. We have not noted in the published criticism of possible NATO expansion a recognition of these desires, which must be given serious consideration.

One of our former colleagues, Ambassador Jonathan Dean, a longtime policy-maker and practitioner in the field of European security, proposes changing current American policy on this issue through inclusion of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in the Western European Union, the defense arm of the European Union, instead of in NATO; NATO-Russian security assurances for the belt of states from the Baltic to Albania, and Russian membership in an Advisory Committee on European Security. While all of us do not endorse every word of his paper, we are impressed by his arguments and believe they should be considered in developing an alternative to the NATO expansion policy.

John A. Armitage, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Department of State, 1973–1978

Robert R. Bowie, Counselor, Department of State, 1966–1968

William I. Cargo, Ambassador to Nepal, 1973–1976

William A. Crawford, Ambassador to Romania, 1961–1965

Richard T. Davies, Ambassador to Poland, 1973–1978

Martin J. Hillenbrand, Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, 1972–1976

U. Alexis Johnson, Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, 1961–1964 and 1965–1966

Ambassador to Japan, 1966–1969

James F. Leonard, Jr., Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, 1977–1979

Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Ambassador to the USSR, 1987–1991

Paul H. Nitze, Secretary of the Navy, 1963–1967; Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1967–1969; Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State on Arms Control Matters, 1985–1989

Herbert S. Okun, Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, 1985–1989

James K. Penfield, Ambassador to Iceland, 1961–1967

Jack R. Perry, Ambassador to Bulgaria, 1979–1981

John D. Scanlan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, 1981–1982

William E. Schaufele, Jr., Ambassador to Poland, 1978–1980

Galen L. Stone, Ambassador to Cyprus, 1978–1981

Emory C. Swank, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, 1969–1970; Ambassador to Cambodia, 1970–1973

Philip H. Trezise, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, 1969–1971

NATO expansion happened despite these 1995 concerns about “the potential consequences of the administration’s policy”. And also despite the concerns expressed in the 1997 open letter. 

In 1999 NATO admitted Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—in 2004 NATO expanded further when Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were admitted. A 2 May 1998 NYT piece quotes a prescient warning from George Kennan: 

His voice is a bit frail now, but the mind, even at age 94, is as sharp as ever. So when I reached George Kennan by phone to get his reaction to the Senate’s ratification of NATO expansion it was no surprise to find that the man who was the architect of America’s successful containment of the Soviet Union and one of the great American statesmen of the 20th century was ready with an answer.

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.”

“What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,” added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed “X,” defined America’s cold-war containment policy for 40 years. “I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

“And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia,” said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. “It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.”

Kennan says that the expansion serves no legitimate purpose, will antagonize the Russians, and will generate unnecessary hostility—he points out that expansion will elicit a hostile reaction that will then be used to justify expansion.

Was a Promise Broken?

There are assertions that Secretary of State James Baker never promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward—look at Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s 7 January 2022 comment:

NATO never promised not to admit new members.

It could not and would not—the “open door policy” was a core provision of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty that founded NATO.

The Russian president at the end of the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev, was asked directly about this in an interview in 2014, and said very clearly that the topic of NATO expansion was not discussed at all in negotiations about German reunification that led to the end of the Cold War.

There was no promise that NATO wouldn’t expand.

Secretary of State James Baker said the same thing.

Blinken says that there “was no promise that NATO wouldn’t expand”. And look at Condoleezza Rice’s 28 January 2022 comment:

Largely because of German objections, we did not offer Membership Action Plan to Ukraine and to Georgia in 2008. And we could debate whether or not we would be here had we done that, but we didn’t. And so the idea that we somehow crossed some line with the Russians, I think, is a figment of Vladimir Putin’s imagination, just like the idea that somehow Jim Baker, all the way back in 1990, said we would never move east. What we were talking about at the time was East Germany, not—nobody was even imagining Czechoslovakia or Poland or Hungary at that time.

Rice says that the idea—“that somehow Jim Baker, all the way back in 1990, said we would never move east”—“is a figment of Vladimir Putin’s imagination”.

NATO continued to expand—after 1990—further and further east. And apparently a promise had indeed been made to Gorbachev—Blinken and Rice are apparently wrong. The National Security Archive website has a 12 December 2017 posting that says:

U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).

The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. 

One can explore the declassified documents. And see whether “subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were” indeed “founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels”.

A 29 November 2009 Spiegel piece says: there “is widespread agreement among all political parties in Moscow, from the Patriots of Russia to the Communists to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, that the West broke its word and short-changed Russia when it was weak”; the “question of what Moscow was in fact promised in 1990 has sparked a historical dispute with far-reaching consequences for Russia’s future relationship with the West”; and after “speaking with many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in detail, SPIEGEL has concluded that there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia”.

Joshua Shifrinson writes in a 1 April 2016 International Security article: “during the diplomacy surrounding German reunification in 1990, the United States repeatedly offered the Soviet Union informal assurances against NATO’s future expansion into Eastern Europe”; in “addition to explicit discussion of a NATO non-expansion pledge in February 1990, assurances against NATO enlargement were epitomized and encapsulated in later offers to give East Germany special military status in NATO, to construct and integrate the Soviet Union into new European security institutions, and to generally recognize Soviet interests in Eastern Europe”; “the United States privately entertained greater ambitions for dominating post–Cold War Europe than many former policymakers and scholars have detailed”; “the United States presented assurances to the Soviet Union that were meant to look powerful, while the United States maneuvered to dominate post–Cold War Europe”; “even as the United States pledged to address Soviet security concerns, it staked out self-interested positions for post–Cold War Europe”; and “the United States exploited Soviet weaknesses despite presenting a cooperative façade”.

Shifrinson addresses the fact that the promise was informal: “even Russian leaders claiming a broken promise do not argue that the Soviet Union received a formal deal”; “not only are formal agreements often the codification of arrangements that states would make regardless of a formal offer, but if private and unwritten discussions are meaningless, then diplomacy itself would be an unnecessary and fruitless exercise”; “analysts have long understood that states do not need formal agreements on which to base their future expectations”; and put “simply, explicit and codified arrangements are neither necessary nor sufficient for actors to strike deals and receive political assurances”.

And a 15 June 2015 piece says: most “legal systems somehow accommodate the creation of binding evaluative standards through non-written materials”; international law “distinguishes itself from other legal systems by virtue of the generous room it reserves for legal normativity generated through non-written materials”; “when it comes to the production of binding evaluative standards, the ‘non-written’ has always enjoyed a privileged position in international law”; “the designation of non-written materials as sources of legal normativity by virtue of customary law and general principles is not specific to international law”; “international law stands out” because “customary law and—to a lesser extent—general principles enjoy a prominent role”; and international law also stands out “because it allows the extraction of a great deal of legal materials from other non-written materials like oral promises as well as tacit agreements between states”.

Is NATO a Purely Defensive Alliance?

It’s worth pointing out that NATO isn’t a purely defensive alliance—look at NATO’s 2011 military intervention in Libya, which was an offensive regime-change operation.

Muammar Gaddafi was tortured to death—a 16 October 2012 Human Rights Watch report talks about footage that shows that “a militiaman stabbed him in his anus with what appears to have been a bayonet”. NATO officials were not—as far as I can tell—upset about his death or how he died. And Hillary Clinton displayed great pleasure—and showed no regret at all—when she heard about Gaddafi’s death. A brief 20 October 2011 CBS report says that Clinton “joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews”—we have video of her joke. The CBS report says that she “shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed”.

I recommend three pieces—a 17 March 2021 Foreign Policy piece, then a 3 December 2020 BBC piece, and then a 5 February 2012 NYT piece—that talk about the Libya intervention’s ghastly consequences. The 2012 piece says:

“When they came into Ménaka, they were yelling, ‘Allahu akbar.’ What does that mean? We don’t do that sort of thing when we fight,” said Bajan Ag Hamatou, a lawmaker from Ménaka. His brother, Aroudeïny Ag Hamatou, the mayor of a small town outside Ménaka, said, “A lot of buildings were destroyed.”

Bajan Ag Hamatou angrily blamed the West for having created a mess in his backyard.

“The Westerners didn’t want Qaddafi, and they got rid of him, and they created problems for all of us,” he said. “When you chased Qaddafi out in that barbaric fashion, you created 10 more Qaddafis. The whole Saharo-Sahelian region has become unlivable.”

I find it disturbing that there seems to be no detailed analysis of the Libya intervention’s consequences for Libya itself as well as for the “‘whole Saharo-Sahelian region’”—I found nothing robust.

What Did William Burns Say?

William Burns—he’s the CIA director—says in his 2019 book The Back Channel:

The issue of expanding NATO’s membership to include Russia’s former Warsaw Pact allies was a deeper challenge. Yeltsin and the Russian elite assumed, with considerable justification, that Jim Baker’s assurances during the negotiation of German reunification in 1990—that NATO would not extend its reach “one inch” farther east—would continue to apply after the breakup of the Soviet Union. That commitment, however, had never been precisely defined or codified, and the Clinton administration saw its inheritance as fairly ambiguous. While Clinton himself was in no rush at the outset of his administration to force the question of enlarging NATO, his first national security advisor, Tony Lake, was an early proponent of expansion. Lake argued that the United States and its European allies had a rare historical opportunity to anchor former Communist countries like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in a successful democratic and market economic transition. A path to NATO membership would offer stability and reassurance, a compelling answer to historical fears of vulnerability to a revanchist Russia, as well as a newly reunified Germany. Amid the chaos of the former Yugoslavia, this argument struck a chord with Clinton.

Others in the new administration were less convinced. Talbott, and later Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, worried that starting down the road to formal enlargement of NATO would undermine hopes for a more enduring partnership with Russia, undercutting reformers who would see it as a vote of no confidence in their efforts, a hedge against the likely failure of reform. We shared similar concerns at Embassy Moscow. In a fall 1995 cable, we laid out the quandary: “The challenge for us is to look past the [government of Russia’s] often irritating rhetoric and erratic and reactive diplomacy to our own long-term self-interest. That demands, in particular, that we continue to seek to build a security order in Europe sufficiently in Russia’s interests so that a revived Russia will have no compelling reason to revise it—and so that in the meantime the ‘stab in the back’ theorists will have only limited room for maneuver in Russian politics.”

In an attempt to buy time and test Russian attitudes, the Pentagon developed the “Partnership for Peace,” a kind of NATO halfway house that would build trust by offering all former Warsaw Pact states—including Russia—a formal relationship with NATO. Clinton indicated at the outset that PfP membership “can also lead to eventual membership in NATO,” but there was no explicit signal of any decision to expand at that stage. Yeltsin and Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev indicated their interest in participating in PfP, dragging out talks in hopes of slowing down any movement toward NATO expansion. Nevertheless, momentum gathered over the course of 1994 toward enlargement, with Clinton declaring publicly in Warsaw in July that the question was not if but when. At an OSCE summit in Budapest in December, Yeltsin lashed back. He declared publicly that the end of the Cold War was in danger of becoming a “cold peace,” and accused Clinton and the NATO allies of “giving up on democracy in Russia.” In a later private conversation with Clinton, Yeltsin was equally direct about his concerns. “For me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding toward those of Russia,” he said, “would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people.”

“Hostility to early NATO expansion,” we reported just after the Budapest outburst, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” We tried to counter the characteristically American tendency to think that the right process could solve almost any substantive problem. “The Russian elite is much more focused on outcomes now,” we wrote in a subsequent cable. “When consultations on Bosnia or NATO expansion or other neuralgic issues don’t—in Russian eyes—affect Western behavior, resentment and disillusionment are bound to follow. In those circumstances, the process serves mainly to remind Russians of their own weakness.”

Burns says that Embassy Moscow reported—“just after the Budapest outburst”—that anti-expansion hostility was “‘almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum’” in Russia.

NATO has a program—the Membership Action Plan (MAP)—that helps aspiring members prepare to join. And Burns’s book contains an excerpt—from a February 2008 “personal email to Secretary Rice, which she later shared with Steve Hadley and Bob Gates”—that includes the following text:  

Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. At this stage, a MAP offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze.…It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. 

Burns says that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)”. And that in “more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests”. 

And then we have a leaked 1 February 2008 memo that Burns wrote—it’s titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” and it includes the following text:

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.…

Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. 

Burns says in the leaked 2008 memo: “Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.”

What Did Washington Do From 2014 Forward?

Jens Stoltenberg—he’s the secretary general of NATO—says at a 7 April 2022 press conference: 

Let me just start by reminding everyone that NATO Allies and NATO have supported Ukraine for many years. After the illegal annexation of Crimea and Russia’s first invasion in 2014, also into Donbas, NATO Allies and NATO have provided significant support with equipment, with training, 10s of 1000s of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained, and then when we saw the intelligence indicating a highly likely invasion Allies stepped up last autumn and this winter. Then after the invasion, Allies have stepped up with additional military support, with more military equipment.

Stoltenberg says that NATO has—since 2014—“provided significant support with equipment, with training, 10s of 1000s of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained”. And “then when we saw the intelligence indicating a highly likely invasion Allies stepped up last autumn and this winter”. 

Derek Chollet is the State Department’s counselor. And a 14 April 2022 Responsible Statecraft piece says:

A senior Biden administration official recently admitted that prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States made no effort to address one of Vladimir Putin’s most often stated top security concerns—the possibility of Ukraine’s membership into NATO. 

When asked on a podcast published on Wednesday by War on the Rocks—a U.S. foreign and defense policy analysis website—whether NATO expansion into Ukraine “was not on the table in terms of negotiations” before the invasion, Derek Chollet, counselor to Secretary of State Antony Blinken replied that “it wasn’t.” 

Chollet’s remarks confirm suspicions by many critics who believe the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough—including offering to deny or delay Ukraine’s NATO membership—to prevent Russia from launching a war against Ukraine. 

“We made clear to the Russians that we were willing to talk to them on issues that we thought were genuine concerns they have that were legitimate in some way, I mean arms control type things of that nature,” Chollet said, adding that the administration didn’t think that “the future of Ukraine” was one of those issues and that its potential NATO membership was a “non-issue.”

“This was not about NATO,” said Chollet, who contradicted himself moments later, saying, “In perpetrating this totally unjustified and unprovoked war, [Putin’s] goal was to try to divide the U.S. from Europe and weaken NATO.”

Of course Putin himself stated publicly many times before the invasion that indeed, Ukraine’s potential NATO membership was a key security concern for Russia. 

Weeks before Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Putin claimed that Russia’s concerns about NATO enlargement were being ignored. “We need to resolve this question now…[and] we hope very much our concern will be heard by our partners and taken seriously,” he later said. 

War on the Rocks’ Ryan Evans told Chollet that he takes Putin’s claims about NATO “seriously,” adding, “I’m a little struck by the refusal to even talk about the issue of NATO expansion.”

“We talked about NATO in saying that NATO is a defensive alliance. NATO is not a threat to Russia,” Chollet said. 

The media should definitely spotlight the fact that the State Department’s counselor “admitted that prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States made no effort to address one of Vladimir Putin’s most often stated top security concerns—the possibility of Ukraine’s membership into NATO”.

Formal membership was not the only issue regarding NATO—there was also the issue of de facto NATO membership. I quoted Stoltenberg on the matter of equipment and training. And Noam Chomsky says in a 4 May 2022 Truthout interview:

President Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 with an overwhelming mandate for peace. He immediately moved to carry it out, with great courage. He had to confront violent right-wing militias who threatened to kill him if he tried to reach a peaceful settlement along the lines of the Minsk II formula. Historian of Russia Stephen Cohen points out that if Zelenskyy had been backed by the U.S., he could have persisted, perhaps solving the problem with no horrendous invasion. The U.S. refused, preferring its policy of integrating Ukraine within NATO. Washington continued to dismiss Russia’s red lines and the warnings of a host of top-level U.S. diplomats and government advisers as it has been doing since Clinton’s abrogation of Bush’s firm and unambiguous promise to Gorbachev that in return for German reunification within NATO, NATO would not expand one inch beyond Germany.

Chomsky says that the US refused to back Zelenskyy, preferred the “policy of integrating Ukraine within NATO”, and “continued to dismiss Russia’s red lines and the warnings of a host of top-level U.S. diplomats and government advisers”. And Chomsky points out that Washington has been dismissing these red lines and these warnings “since Clinton’s abrogation of Bush’s firm and unambiguous promise to Gorbachev”.

The integration should be right in the spotlight—everyone should know about it. There was—leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a highly provocative situation where Ukraine was becoming a NATO member in all but name. Everyone should read the 1 September 2021 White House statement “Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership”. And should also read the 10 November 2021 State Department press release “U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership” that appeared about 100 days before the invasion happened. It’s important to read the September 2021 statement, read the November 2021 press release, and ask how the Kremlin would view each of them—the media doesn’t talk about this crucial context of integration.