The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World
By Eisenhower Media
May 22, 2023:
Information Clearing House --
The Russia-Ukraine War has been an unmitigated disaster. Hundreds of
thousands have been killed or wounded. Millions have been displaced.
Environmental and economic destruction have been incalculable. Future
devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever
closer toward open war.
We deplore the violence, war crimes, indiscriminate missile strikes,
terrorism, and other atrocities that are part of this war. The solution to
this shocking violence is not more weapons or more war, with their guarantee
of further death and destruction.
As Americans and national security experts, we urge President Biden and
Congress to use their full power to end the Russia-Ukraine War speedily
through diplomacy, especially given the grave dangers of military escalation
that could spiral out of control.
Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy made an observation that is
crucial for our survival today. “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.”
Click to Support
Independent Journalism
The immediate cause of this disastrous war in Ukraine is Russia’s
invasion. Yet the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders
served to provoke Russian fears. And Russian leaders made this point for 30
years. A failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed
to end the Russia-Ukraine War before it destroys Ukraine and endangers
humanity.
The Potential for Peace
Russia’s current geopolitical anxiety is informed by memories of invasion
from Charles XII, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. U.S. troops were among an
Allied invasion force that intervened unsuccessfully against the winning
side in Russia’s post-World War I civil war. Russia sees NATO enlargement
and presence on its borders as a direct threat; the U.S. and NATO see only
prudent preparedness. In diplomacy, one must attempt to see with strategic
empathy, seeking to understand one’s adversaries. This is not weakness: it
is wisdom.
We reject the idea that diplomats, seeking peace, must choose sides, in
this case either Russia or Ukraine. In favoring diplomacy we choose the side
of sanity. Of humanity. Of peace.
We consider President Biden’s promise to back Ukraine
“as long as it takes” to be a license to pursue ill-defined and
ultimately unachievable goals. It could prove as catastrophic as President
Putin’s decision last year to launch his criminal invasion and occupation.
We cannot and will not endorse the strategy of fighting Russia to the last
Ukrainian.
We advocate for a meaningful and genuine commitment to diplomacy,
specifically an immediate ceasefire and negotiations without any
disqualifying or prohibitive preconditions. Deliberate provocations
delivered the Russia-Ukraine War. In the same manner, deliberate diplomacy
can end it.
U.S. Actions and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
As the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, U.S. and Western
European leaders
assured Soviet and then Russian leaders that NATO
would not expand toward Russia’s borders.
“There would be no extension of…NATO one inch to the east,” U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on
February 9, 1990. Similar assurances from other U.S. leaders as well as from
British, German and French leaders
throughout the 1990s confirm this.
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. Russia further singled out NATO expansion into Ukraine as
especially provocative.
Seeing the War Through Russia’s Eyes
Our attempt at understanding the Russian perspective on their war does
not endorse the invasion and occupation, nor does it imply the Russians had
no other option but this war.
Yet, just as Russia had other options, so too did the U.S. and NATO
leading up to this moment.
The Russians made their red lines clear. In Georgia and Syria, they
proved they would use force to defend those lines. In 2014, their immediate
seizure of Crimea and their support of Donbas separatists demonstrated they
were serious in their commitment to defending their interests. Why this was
not understood by U.S. and NATO leadership is unclear; incompetence,
arrogance, cynicism, or a treacherous mixture of all three are likely
contributing factors.
Again, even as the Cold War ended, U.S. diplomats, generals and politicians
were
warning of the dangers of expanding NATO to Russia’s borders and of
maliciously interfering in Russia’s sphere of influence. Former Cabinet
officials Robert Gates and William Perry issued these warnings, as did
venerated diplomats George Kennan, Jack Matlock and Henry Kissinger. In
1997, fifty senior U.S. foreign policy experts wrote an open letter to
President Bill Clinton advising him not to expand NATO, calling it
“a policy error of historic proportions.” President Clinton chose to
ignore these warnings.
Most important to our understanding of the hubris
and Machiavellian calculation in U.S. decision-making surrounding the
Russia-Ukraine War is the dismissal of the warnings issued by Williams
Burns, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In a cable
to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008, while serving as Ambassador
to Russia, Burns
wrote of NATO expansion and Ukrainian membership:
“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.”
Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings? Profit
from weapons sales was a major factor. Facing opposition to NATO expansion,
a group of neoconservatives and top executives of U.S. weapons manufacturers
formed the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Between 1996 and 1998, the
largest arms manufacturers
spent $51 million ($94 million today) on lobbying and millions more on
campaign contributions. With this largesse, NATO expansion quickly became a
done deal, after which U.S. weapons manufacturers
sold billions of dollars of weapons to the new NATO members.
So far, the U.S. has
sent $30 billion worth of military gear and weapons to Ukraine, with
total aid to Ukraine exceeding $100 billion. War, it’s been said, is a
racket, one that is highly profitable for a select few.
NATO expansion, in sum, is a key feature of a militarized U.S. foreign
policy characterized by unilateralism featuring regime change and preemptive
wars. Failed wars, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, have produced
slaughter and further confrontation, a harsh reality of America’s own
making. The Russia-Ukraine War has opened a new arena of confrontation and
slaughter. This reality is not entirely of our own making, yet it may well
be our undoing, unless we dedicate ourselves to forging a diplomatic
settlement that stops the killing and defuses tensions.
Let’s make America a force for peace in the world.
SIGNERS
Dennis Fritz, Director, Eisenhower Media Network;
Command Chief Master Sergeant, US Air Force (retired)
Matthew Hoh, Associate Director, Eisenhower Media Network;
Former Marine Corps officer, and State and Defense official.
William J. Astore, Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force
(retired)
Karen Kwiatkowski, Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force
(retired)
Dennis Laich, Major General, US Army (retired)
Jack Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., 1987-91;
author of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended
Todd E. Pierce, Major, Judge Advocate, U.S. Army (retired)
Coleen Rowley, Special Agent, FBI (retired)
Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University
Christian Sorensen, Former Arabic linguist, US Air Force
Chuck Spinney, Retired Engineer/Analyst, Office of
Secretary of Defense
Winslow Wheeler, National security adviser to four
Republican and Democratic US
Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colonel, US Army (retired)
Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army (retired) and former US
diplomat
TIMELINE
1990 – U.S. assures Russia that NATO will not expand towards its border
“…there would be no extension of…NATO one inch to the east,”
says US Secretary of State James Baker.
1996 – U.S. weapons manufacturers form the Committee to Expand NATO, spending
over $51 million lobbying Congress.
1997 – 50 foreign policy experts including former senators, retired
military officers and diplomats sign an open letter stating NATO expansion
to be “a
policy error of historic proportions.”
1999 – NATO
admits Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to NATO. U.S. and NATO
bomb Russia’s ally, Serbia.
2001 – U.S. unilaterally
withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
2004 – Seven more Eastern European nations join NATO. NATO troops are now
directly on Russia’s border.
2004 – Russia’s parliament
passed a resolution denouncing NATO’s expansion. Putin responded by
saying that Russia would “build our defense and security policy
correspondingly.”
2008 – NATO leaders
announced plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia, also on Russia’s borders,
into NATO.
2009 – U.S.
announced plans to put missile systems into Poland and Romania.
2014 –
Legally elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled violence to
Moscow. Russia views ouster as a coup by U.S. and NATO nations.
2016 – U.S.
begins troop buildup in Europe.
2019 – U.S. unilaterally withdraws from
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.
2020 – U.S. unilaterally
withdraws from Open Skies Treaty.
2021 – Russia
submits negotiation proposals while sending more forces to the border
with Ukraine. U.S. and NATO officials
reject the Russian proposals immediately.
Feb 24, 2022 – Russia
invades Ukraine, starting the Russia-Ukraine War.
This ad reflects the views of the signers. Paid for by Eisenhower Media
Network, a project of People Power Initiatives.
Read more at
www.EisenhowerMediaNetwork.org
