By Jeffrey D. Sachs
March 30, 2023:
Information Clearing House
-- The greatest enemy of
economic development is war. If the world slips
further into global conflict, our economic hopes
and our very survival could go up in flames. The
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists just moved the
hands of the Doomsday Clock to a mere 90 seconds
to midnight.
The world’s biggest economic loser in 2022
was Ukraine, where the economy collapsed by 35
percent according to the International Monetary
Fund. The war in Ukraine could end soon, and
economic recovery could begin, but this depends
on Ukraine understanding its predicament as
victim of a US-Russia proxy war that broke out
in 2014.
The US has been heavily arming and funding
Ukraine since 2014 with the goal of expanding
NATO and weakening Russia. America’s proxy wars
typically rage for years and even decades,
leaving battleground countries like Ukraine in
rubble.
Unless the proxy war ends soon, Ukraine faces
a dire future. Ukraine needs to learn from the
horrible experience of Afghanistan to avoid
becoming a long-term disaster. It could also
look to the US proxy wars in Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Starting in 1979, the US armed the mujahadeen
(Islamist fighters) to harass the Soviet-backed
government in Afghanistan. As President Jimmy
Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski later explained, the US objective was
to provoke the Soviet Union to intervene, in
order to trap the Soviet Union in a costly war.
The fact that Afghanistan would be collateral
damage was of no concern to US leaders.
The Soviet military entered Afghanistan in
1979 as the US hoped, and fought through the
1980s. Meanwhile, the US-backed fighters
established al-Qaeda in the 1980s, and the
Taliban in the early 1990s. The US “trick” on
the Soviet Union had boomeranged. In 2001, the
US invaded Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda and the
Taliban. The US war continued for another 20
years, until the US finally left in 2021.
Sporadic US military operations in Afghanistan
continue.
Afghanistan lies in ruins. While the US
wasted more than $2 trillion of US military
outlays, Afghanistan is impoverished, with a
2021 gross domestic product below $400 per
person! As a parting “gift” to Afghanistan in
2021, the US Government seized Afghanistan’s
tiny foreign exchange holdings, paralyzing the
banking system.
The proxy war in Ukraine began nine years ago
when the US Government backed the overthrow of
Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych.
Yanukovych’s sin from the US viewpoint was his
attempt to maintain Ukraine’s neutrality despite
the US desire to expand NATO to include Ukraine
(and Georgia). America’s objective was for NATO
countries to encircle Russia in the Black Sea
region. To achieve this goal, the US has been
massively arming and funding Ukraine since 2014.
The American protagonists then and now are
the same. The US Government’s point person on
Ukraine in 2014 was Assistant Secretary of State
Victoria Nuland, who today is undersecretary of
state. Back in 2014, Nuland worked closely with
Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national
security advisor, who played the same role for
Vice President Biden in 2014.
The US overlooked to two harsh political
realities in Ukraine. The first is that Ukraine
is deeply divided ethnically and politically
between Russia-hating nationalists in Western
Ukraine and ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine
and Crimea. The second is that NATO enlargement
to Ukraine crosses a Russian redline. Russia
will fight to the end, and escalate as
necessary, to prevent the US from incorporating
Ukraine into NATO.
The US repeatedly asserts that NATO is a
defensive alliance. Yet NATO bombed Russia’s
ally Serbia for 78 days in 1999 in order to
break Kosovo away from Serbia, after which the
US established a giant military base in Kosovo.
NATO forces similarly toppled Russian ally
Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, setting off a decade of
chaos in Libya. Russia certainly will never
accept NATO in Ukraine.
At the end of 2021, Russian President
Vladimir Putin put forward three demands to the
US: Ukraine should remain neutral and out of
NATO; Crimea should remain part of Russia; and
the Donbas should become autonomous in accord
with the Minsk II Agreement. The
Biden-Sullivan-Nuland team rejected negotiations
over NATO enlargement, eight years after the
same group backed Yanukovych’s overthrow. With
Putin’s negotiating demands flatly rejected by
the US, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
In March 2022, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy seemed to understand Ukraine’s dire
predicament as victim of a US-Russia proxy war.
He declared publicly that Ukraine would become a
neutral country, and asked for security
guarantees. He also publicly recognized that
Crimea and Donbas would need some kind of
special treatment.
Israel’s Prime Minister at that time, Naftali
Bennett, became involved as a mediator, along
with Turkey. Russia and Ukraine came close to
reaching an agreement. Yet, as Bennett has
recently explained, the US “blocked” the peace
process.
Since then, the war has escalated. According
to US investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, US
agents blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in
September. More recently, the US and allies have
committed to sending tanks, longer-range
missiles, and possibly fighter jets to Ukraine.
The basis for peace is clear. Ukraine would
be a neutral non-NATO country. Crimea would
remain home to Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet,
as it has been since 1783. A practical solution
would be found for the Donbas, such as a
territorial division, autonomy, or an armistice
line. Most importantly, the fighting would stop,
Russian troops would leave Ukraine, and
Ukraine’s sovereignty would be guaranteed by the
UN Security Council and other nations. Such an
agreement could have been reached in December
2021 or in March 2022.
Above all, the Government and people of
Ukraine would tell Russia and the US that
Ukraine refuses any longer to be the
battleground of a proxy war. In the face of deep
internal divisions, Ukrainians on both sides of
the ethnic divide would strive for peace, rather
than believing that an outside power will spare
them the need to compromise.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned
economics professor, bestselling author,
innovative educator and global leader in
sustainable development. — Ed.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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