Despite
constant pressure from Sen. John McCain and our neocons to bring Ukraine into
NATO, wiser heads on both sides of the Atlantic rejected the idea.
On hearing the State Department’s George Kent and William Taylor
describe President Donald Trump’s withholding of military aid to Ukraine, The
New York Times summarized and solemnly endorsed their testimony:
“What
clearly concerned both witnesses wasn’t simply the abuse of power by the
President, but the harm it inflicted on Ukraine, a critical ally, under
constant assault by Russian forces.”
“‘Even
as we sit here today, the Russians are attacking Ukrainian soldiers in their
own country, and have been for four years,’ Taylor said. ‘I saw this on the
front line last week; the day I was there a Ukrainian soldier was killed and
four more wounded.'”
Kent
compared Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s intervention on the side of the
Donbass secessionists to “our own Minutemen in 1776.”
“More
than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial
integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. … American support in
Ukraine’s own de facto war of independence has been critical.”
Kent
went on:
“The
American colonies may not have prevailed against British imperial might without
help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of Lafayette’s organized
assistance to General George Washington’s army and Admiral John Paul Jones’
navy, Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five
years in desperately needed train and equip security assistance to Ukraine…”
“Similar
to von Steuben training colonials at Valley Forge, U.S. and NATO allied
trainers develop the skills of Ukrainian units at Yavoriv near the Polish
border, and elsewhere. They help rewrite military education for Ukraine’s next
generation, as von Steuben did for America’s first.”
“One
would think, listening to this,” writes Barbara Boland, the American
Conservative columnist, “that the U.S. had always provided arms to Ukraine, and
that Ukraine has relied on this aid for years. But this is untrue and the
Washington blob knows this.”
Indeed, Ukraine has never been a NATO
ally or a “critical ally.”
Three
decades ago, George H.W. Bush implored Ukraine not to set out on a course of
“suicidal nationalism” by declaring independence from the Russian Federation.
Despite constant pressure from Sen. John McCain and our neocons to bring
Ukraine into NATO, wiser heads on both sides of the Atlantic rejected the idea.
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Why?
Because the “territorial integrity and sovereignty” of Ukraine is not now and
has never been a vital interest of ours that would justify a U.S. war with a
nuclear-armed Russia.
Instead,
it was the avoidance of such a war that was the vital interest that nine U.S.
presidents, from Truman to Bush I, secured, despite such provocations as the
crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the building of the Berlin
Wall.
In February 2014, the elected pro-Russian
government of Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by U.S.-backed protesters in
Maidan Square, cheered on by McCain. This was direct U.S. intervention in the
internal affairs of Ukraine. Victoria Nuland of the State Department conceded
that we had dumped billions into Ukraine to reorient its regime to the West.
To
Vladimir Putin, the Kyiv coup meant the loss of Russia’s historic Black Sea
naval base at Sebastopol in Crimea. Rather than let that happen, Putin effected
an uprising, Crimea’s secession from Ukraine, and the annexation by Russia. In
eastern Ukraine, the pro-Russian Donbass rose up in rebellion against the
pro-NATO regime in Kyiv.
Civil war broke out. We backed the new
regime. Russia backed the rebels. And five years later, the war goes on. Why is
this our fight?
During
the Obama years, major lethal aid was denied to Ukraine.
The
White House reasoned that arming Ukraine would lead to an escalation of the war
in the east, greater Russian intervention, defeat for Kyiv, and calls for the
U.S. to intervene militarily, risking a war with Russia.
Not
until Trump became president did lethal aid begin flowing to Ukraine, including
Javelin anti-tank missiles.
So
where are we?
Despite dramatic depictions of Ukraine
as our embattled ally, Ukraine has never been an ally. We are not now nor have
we ever been obligated to fight for its sovereignty or territorial integrity.
Efforts to bring Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia into NATO have been repeatedly
rebuffed in the United States and by our European NATO allies.
Kent
and Taylor are honorable men. But they are career diplomats of the Department
of State and veteran advocates of a foreign policy that sees Russia as an
enduring aggressor and Ukraine as a fighting ally entitled to U.S. military
assistance.
They
have, in the old phrase, gone native. They champion the policies of yesterday
and the embattled countries to which they are accredited and to whose causes
they have become converted.
But Trump was elected to overturn the
interventionist policies America has pursued since the century began. He was
elected to end Cold War II with Russia, to reach a modus vivendi as Reagan did,
and to extricate us from the endless wars into which Presidents Bush and Obama
plunged the nation.
