Putin, it would seem, has decided to invade Ukraine as an attempt to
prevent the expansion of NATO into the Russian borders. This has been an
increasing threat to Russian security according to the Russian
President since a Ukrainian government was formed in the aftermath of a
2014 Obama-backed coup.
When Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea region, Western nations
responded with sanctions aimed at making it more difficult for Russia to
transact in the U.S.-dominated global financial system, therefore Putin
would have been aware that the response to the invasion of Ukraine,
would be predictably the same economic sanctions.
Could this be a Strategic plan from Putin who would have known the exact outcome of his actions?
The Background
We are now coming to the close of a financial era that commenced in
August 1971, which is that of the “Fiat money,” according to former Bertrand Badré chief financial officer (CFO) of the World Bank.
In 1971 President Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold (source). This in effect ended the 25-year Bretton Woods era
agreement and System which had created a collective international
currency exchange regime that had been in place since the 1940s. The
system required a currency peg to the U.S. dollar so fixed the dollar
price to gold (source).
LIVING BEYOND OUR MEANS
The dollar was now free from the gold standard and floated against
other major currencies, relieving the pressure on the global major reserve currency
and was to unleash a 40-year period of leveraged debt finance, bringing
with it a perceived global prosperity and higher living standards for
millions of people.
It was also accompanied by bouts of inflation and crashing asset
bubbles and now that the discipline to use that responsibility carefully
was gone countries began living beyond their means (UK) Unsustainable Debt) (Global debt soars to 356% of GDP).
The debt-based monetary system has an interest rate attached to your
money, meaning the debt continues to increase at massively higher rates
than the real money increases and according to financial expert John
Titus, this results in “periodic bloodlettings.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said the UK must accelerate NATO's
modernisation and deepen cooperation on tech and cyber, with a view to
ending the "strategic dependence on authoritarian regimes for our energy
and for other vital resources."
She added that Russian President
Vladimir Putin had been “surprised” by the “toughness” of sanctions
levelled against his regime.
Speaking at a press conference with
US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in Washington, she said: “Putin’s
illegal invasion of Ukraine is causing immense pain and suffering. Yet
he is not making the progress he planned.
“Since the build-up on
the border, the United Kingdom and the United States have led work in
the G7 and through Nato to challenge Putin’s aggression.
“Before
the invasion, the United States and the UK called out his playbook of
false flags, attempts to install a puppet regime in Kyiv, of fake
provocations. We worked with our G7 allies to warn that he would face
severe costs and a determined Ukrainian people.
“We have surprised
Putin with our unity and the toughness of our sanctions, hitting the
banks, the ships, the planes, the oligarchs, and the oil and gas
revenues. And the brave Ukrainian people have surprised him with their
determination and their leadership.
“Now is not the time to let up. Putin must fail.”
Editor's note: Fine rhetoric from Ms Truss but it would have been more credible if she had mentioned where the thinks to oil needed to fuel the UK economy might be sources if not from tyrannical regimes like Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Syria and other oil producing nations with regimes that fall a long way short of being squeaky clean.
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Driving
home from the gym Tuesday night, I saw a billboard demanding a no-fly
zone over Ukraine. This, it turns out, is now a super-majority position
in America, according to a recent poll, despite the near certainty that this would lead to World War III. Another example of manufactured consent at work.
One
of the ways the discourse about the Ukraine war is policed is by
claiming that someone who mentions NATO expansion as one of the causes
of the current conflict is a "Putin apologist". Oxford-trained British
researcher Noah Carl wrote a piece refuting this lazy ad hominem charge.
I have posted it in full below. Before that, a quick update on our
system's top names, in light of the Ukraine crisis.
Ukraine Crisis Rewards Oil Exposure
In my previous post (Ukraine
Is Trying To Goad The U.S. Into World War III), I mentioned that our
top ten securities on Monday included five oil names. Our system's
gauges of stock and options market sentiment started picking up oil
names well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine though. For example,
these were our top ten names on January 27th. As you can see, they
included the Direxion Daily S&P Oil & Gas Exp. & Prod. Bull
2x Shares ETF (GUSH) along with the oil E&P Antero Resources (AR).
Here's
how they've done since: up 6.31%, on average, versus down 3.48% for
SPY, with pretty much all of our gains coming from the two oil names
plus the biotech stock Intra-Cellular Therapies (ITCI).
Mentioning NATO does not make you a "Putin apologist"
If
you venture to suggest that NATO expansion has anything to do with
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, you will be promptly informed that you’re a
“Putin apologist” or that you’re peddling “pro-Putin talking points”
(or some variation on this theme). The argument seems to be that, by
suggesting Putin’s invasion was motivated – even in part – by anything
other than bellicose revanchism, you’re absolving him of responsibility
and even undermining the war effort. However, aside from being a blatant
ad-hominem (most people, though not all, consider “Putin apologism” to
be a bad thing), this argument is deficient on three counts.
First, foreign policy analysts have been pointing out the risks of NATO expansion since before Putin
came to power. It’s therefore very difficult to see how they could have
been engaging in “Putin apologism”, unless they are somehow capable of
time travel. Vladimir Putin become Prime Minister of Russia in 1999,
before succeeding to the Presidency the following year. Yet as far back
as 1997, Jack Matlock – US ambassador to the Soviet Union – said the following in a Congressional statement:
I
consider the administration’s recommendation to take new members into
NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United
States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound
strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving
the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that
wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events
that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since
the Soviet Union collapsed.
Bill Clinton’s Defence Secretary William Perry wrote in his book My Journey at the Nuclear Brink that
he was so opposed to NATO enlargement in 1996 that he “considered
resigning”, and that he is “not willing to concede” that the “rupture in
relations with Russia would have occurred anyway”. In 1998, George
Kennan – who’s been described as the “architect” of the US containment policy during the Cold War – told the journalist Thomas Friedman:
I
think it is the beginning of a new cold war. 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.
Second,
many of those who’ve expressed reservations about NATO enlargement
don’t exactly fit the mould of a “Putin apologist”. I’ve already named
three – two former US ambassadors and a former defence secretary. But
there are plenty of others who can scarcely be accused of having
pro-Putin sympathies: former Australian Prime Minister Malcom Fraser;
former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates; former British ambassador to
Russia Sir Roderic Lyne; and current CIA Director William Burns. They’re
all in this excellent thread by Arnaud Bertrand. Even Joe Bidenwarned about NATO admitting the Baltic states in 1997.
If
a former US ambassador (and a patriot to boot) can describe NATO
enlargement as something that “would make the Founding Fathers of this
country turn over in their graves”, it is surely possible for others to
reach similar conclusions without being stooges of the Kremlin. Now I’m
sure there are some genuine “Putin apologists” in the West, and
they may well go around blaming NATO for the present crisis. But to
conclude that everyone who blames NATO is therefore engaged in “Putin apologism” would be an example of the “Hitler used toilet paper” fallacy. (“Oh, you use toilet paper? So did Hitler!”)
Third, there’s a lot of evidence that NATO enlargement was a
factor – arguably the most important factor – in Putin’s decision to
invade. This evidence is by no means dispositive; isolating the causes
of particular historical events is notoriously tricky. But I believe
it’s possible to defend statements such as, “If the West had ruled
out NATO membership for Ukraine, Putin would not have invaded”. Having
said that, I’m willing to be convinced that I’m wrong. Some people claim
that Putin always had designs on Ukraine, and would have invaded regardless of our policy; or perhaps that the only thing that would have stopped him is Ukraine joining NATO even sooner! If so, let them make their arguments without calling those of us who disagree “Putin apologists”.
So, what’s the evidence that NATO enlargement set the stage for Russia’s invasion? Much of it’s laid out in a 2014 article by
John Mearsheimer titled ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault’.
I’ll do my best to summarise. Ukraine has always been an ethnically
divided country, with mostly Ukrainian speakers in the North West, and
mostly Russian speakers in the South East (see above). Prior to February
of 2014, about 50% of Ukrainians favoured one party, and about 50%
favoured another. The map below shows results from the 2010 election. As
you can see, there’s an extremely strong relationship between ethnicity
and voting.
Viktor Yanukovych, whose party was favoured in the Russian-speaking parts of the country, happened to win the
2010 election. So in 2010, Ukraine had a democratically elected (albeit
massively corrupt) pro-Russian President. The trouble started in
November 2013, when his government decided not to ratify an association
agreement with the EU so that it could pursue closer economic ties with
Russia. This gave rise to the Western-backed Euromaidan protests, and
the eventual toppling of Yanukovych. Which in turn led to the outbreak
of the war in Donbass and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
It would be fair to say that, prior to the toppling of Yanukovych, both the West and Russia had been meddling in Ukrainian affairs – each trying to steer the country in its own direction. After this
event, however, the country veered sharply away from Russia. (This was
partly due to the fact that Crimea and the Donbass – the two most
pro-Russian areas – had been removed from the electoral map.)
Petro Poroshenko, the man who replaced Yanukovych, announced that “we’ve decided to return to the course of NATO integration”. NATO troops began military exercises in Ukraine later that year. Then in 2019, the Constitution was amended to include joining NATO as a strategic goal. By June of 2020, Ukraine was recognised by
NATO as an “Enhanced Opportunities Partner”. And in November of 2021,
the US and Ukraine signed a “Charter on Strategic Partnership”, which declared that
the US “supports Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign
policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to
Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO”.
At the same as it was making overtures to joining NATO, the government began implementing pro-nationalist policies. The day after the toppling of Yanukovych, parliament voted to
repeal a 2012 law that gave Russian and other minority languages the
status of “regional languages” (allowing their use in courts, schools
and other public institutions). This decision was initially vetoed by
the acting President. However, the law was later ruled unconstitutional
by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court. Efforts to promote Ukrainian
nationalism were stepped up further under Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who
assumed the Presidency in 2019. He banned pro-Russian media, and arrested the
opposition leader – a gentleman named Viktor Medvedchuk, who happens to
be a personal friend of Putin. (Medvedchuk stands accused of treason.)
Russian
leaders have long viewed Ukraine as what Mearsheimer calls a “core
strategic interest”. And they have repeatedly made this clear to their
counterparts in Washington. Back in 1995, when CIA Director William
Burns was working at the US embassy in Moscow, he wrote a memo stating,
“Hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across
the domestic political spectrum here.” And in a later memo, sent to the
US Secretary of State before NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit, Burns wrote:
Ukrainian
entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines 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.
The memo was titled ‘Nyet
means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement red lines’. Burns had previously
been called in by the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and reminded of
Russia’s long-standing opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine. Lavrov
told Burns 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 spite of all this, NATO
members at the Bucharest Summit formally agreed that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO”.
Russian
opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine is particularly strong due to
feelings of betrayal over earlier rounds of NATO expansion, which they
had been assured by the US would not happen. While some commentators dispute the
US ever promised Russia that NATO wouldn’t expand into Eastern Europe,
the political scientist Joshua Shifrinson – who has studied the issue in
greater detail than anyone else – comes to different conclusions. In a
prize-wining 2016 article (with 185 footnotes), he notes that
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.
Shifrinson further states, “There are
numerous reasons to condemn Russian behavior in Georgia and Ukraine, as
well as against states in Eastern Europe, but Russia’s leaders may be
telling the truth when they claim that Russian actions are driven by
mistrust.” This surely helps to explain some
of Putin’s remarks in his February 22nd speech, such as when he claimed
“they have deceived us” and when he referred to the US as the “empire
of lies”.
Of course, there are important cultural and geographic reasons why Russian leaders regard Ukraine as a “core strategic interest”. The cultural reasons are laid out in Putin’s rambling 2015 essay ‘On
the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’ – which you can read
for yourself. (Note: I’m not saying Putin is correct; I realise that his
factual claims are heavily contested. I’m just saying that’s what he,
and probably most Russian nationalists, believe.) The geographic reasons
are more straightforward:
Ukraine’s vast territory provides a buffer-zone between NATO’s Western
Border and Russia’s major cities; and Russia requires access to its
Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the port of Sevastopol in Crimea (see
above).
Finally, it’s worth noting that Putin explicitlymentioned the
threat of NATO expansion as the motivation for his “special military
operation” in his February 22nd speech. In fact, he spends the entire
first half of the speech criticising US foreign policy vis-a-vis NATO,
and arguing that NATO is an aggressive not a defensive alliance. Of
course, we shouldn’t take what Putin says at face value. Perhaps he was
concealing the true motivations for his military aggression? But if
you’re going to make this argument, you can’t rely on other things Putin has said (like his 2015 essay), since you’ve already assumed that his words can’t be trusted.
Arguing that NATO enlargement was a key motivation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not make
you a “Putin apologist”. Foreign policy analysts have been pointing to
the risks of NATO enlargement since before Putin came to power. And many
of those analysts were bona fide American patriots (ambassadors and
defence secretaries), not fringe commentators with an anti-Western axe
to grind. What’s more, there’s a lot of evidence that NATO enlargement was a
crucial factor in Putin’s decision-making: longstanding Russian policy
with respect to Ukraine; developments in that country since 2014; and
the content of Putin’s February 22nd speech.
Of course, none of this means we have to support Russia’s military aggression. So what’s the upshot? We should have followed John Mearsheimer’s advice in 2014: work with Russia to create a prosperous and neutral Ukraine,
which respects minority rights. Of course, that’s no longer possible,
as it’s 2022 and Russian artillery fire is raining down on Ukrainian
cities. But if we want to end this conflict sooner rather than later,
while minimising the risk of a devastating nuclear war, we should be
pushing for some kind of settlement that accepts Ukraine won’t be a member of NATO.
