Western involvement in the Ukraine war

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft analyzes US and Western foreign policy. The mission statement of the QIRS says it promotes a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy and critique ideologies that have led to counterproductive outcomes, e.g., the Ukraine war. It advocates for responsible statecraft, which serves the public interest, engages the world through peaceful cooperation, builds a peaceful world, abhors war, and is pro-democracy. A Dec. 4, 2023 QIRS article, Did the West deliberately prolong the Ukraine war?, makes a very troubling argument:

Mounting evidence proves that we cannot believe anything our officials say about the futility of negotiations

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the war in Ukraine could have been ended mere months into the Russian invasion — and that the U.S. and U.K. governments worked to prevent this from happening.

The latest piece of corroboration comes courtesy David Arakhamia, the parliamentary leader of Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party who led the Ukrainian delegation in peace talks with Moscow. Arakhamia told journalist Natalia Moseichuk in a recent televised interview that “Russia's goal was to push us to take neutrality,” meaning to commit to not joining NATO, and that “they were ready to end the war if we accept neutrality.”

There were several reasons the negotiations ultimately collapsed, he said, including the need to change the Ukrainian constitution (which had been amended in February 2019 to enshrine the country’s NATO aspirations), and the fact that Johnson had come to Kyiv to inform Ukrainian officials the West wouldn’t sign any agreement with Moscow, instead urging: “let’s just fight.”

Arakhamia also said that Kyiv’s lack of trust in the Russian side to fulfill its end of the bargain meant that the peace deal “could only be done if there were security guarantees” — suggesting, obliquely, that negotiations could have borne fruit had they received the backing and involvement of NATO states. Western governments’ provision of security guarantees for Ukraine have long been part of the discussion for how to ensure the sustainability of a post-war peace deal, and in fact, Arakhmia himself disclosed in the same interview that “the Western allies advised us not to agree to ephemeral security guarantees.”  

The interview corroborates claims first reported in May 2022 by the broadly Western-alignedUkrainska Pravda outlet — which reported that Boris Johnson told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the West wouldn’t support any peace deal regardless of what Ukraine wanted, and they preferred to keep taking the fight to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was less powerful than they had thought.  

Former U.S. national security official Fiona Hill reported the two sides had reached a tentative peace deal the same month of Johnson’s surprise visit to Kyiv, while former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and several Turkish officials — all of whom were involved at various times in the talks — have said that NATO officials stopped or undermined negotiations.  

Finally, the effort to prevent peace talks from bearing fruit put not just more Ukrainians in danger, but the entire world. After assuring the U.S. public in February that they needn’t fear nuclear war with Russia, by September, President Joe Biden was privately warning that the world was the closest it had been to “Armageddon” in sixty years. The nineteen months that followed the failure of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks saw several near-misses that could have turned the war into one between Russia and NATO, one that would likely escalate to a nuclear confrontation.

The decision not to seriously pursue a viable diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine has been a disaster for that country and its inhabitants. The only mild consolation is that it could offer a vital lesson for the United States and other NATO states to apply to and prevent future conflicts — if we dare learn it, that is.

This line of reasoning and supporting evidence is solid evidence that the US and NATO could have had a peace deal early in the war, but decided to prolong the war to weaken Putin and Russia. History and analysis of the war has been discussed here before (here, here and here), but this article reinforces concerns that the situation in the Ukraine is probably untenable for the US, NATO and the Ukraine.

This is information the American people should be aware of. Repeated exposure to it helps keep it in memory (something I definitely need). The US is on the verge of abandoning the Ukraine to Putin’s mercies. As we all know, Putin has no mercy. If Ukrainian defenses collapse, there will be vengeance including genocide and ethnic cleansing. The Ukraine could be annexed into Russia and disappear. That catastrophic failure probably could have been prevented if the US had a more competent foreign policy and a more competent, less pro-war president. 

The wheels of justice turn slowly....

 But it does turn.  OR so I've heard. Eventually, you are gonna be found and arrested. 

But that still raises the question: Why is it taking THIS long? 

Just the last few weeks we have had:

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/f-you-this-is-my-house-accused-jan-6-rioter-wife-accused-of-confronting-cops-at-capitol-arrested-feds-say/

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/accused-jan-6-rioter-wore-jacket-with-his-own-company-logo-and-phone-number-at-capitol-feds/

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/wooh-we-in-this-motherf-father-who-came-to-capitol-on-jan-6-with-wife-14-year-old-son-found-guilty/

All I can think of is thank goodness that https://lawandcrime.com/ is keeping up with these arrests.

But what also concerns me, why aren't these stories plastered all over the pages of the MSM? It's an election year. People are starting to forget about Jan. 6, 2021. 

REMIND THEM!

News bits: Authoritarian law; TTKP elites & inconvenient truth; Etc.

The AP reports about what the rule of the thug authoritarian looks like: 

In October 2021, [Illinois Courts County Judge Robert] Adrian had found then 18-year-old Drew Clinton of Taylor, Michigan, guilty of sexual assaulting a 16-year-old girl during a May 2021 graduation party.

The state Judicial Inquiry Board filed a complaint against Adrian after the judge threw out Clinton’s conviction in January 2022, with the judge saying that the 148 days Clinton had spent in jail was punishment enough.

The complaint said Adrian had acknowledged he was supposed to impose the mandatory four-year sentence against Clinton, but that he would not send him to prison. “That is not just,” Adrian said at the sentencing hearing, according to court transcripts. “I will not do that.”  

But in Friday’s decision, the commission wrote that it found Adrian’s claim that “he reversed his guilty finding based on his reconsideration of the evidence and his conclusion that the State had failed to prove its case to be a subterfuge — respondent’s attempt to justify the reversal post hoc.”

Clinton cannot be tried again for the same crime under the Fifth Amendment. A motion to expunge Clinton’s record was denied in February 2023.

“I will not do that.” And the rapist gets off, free to do it again because it was so much fun the first time.

That is the epitome of the rule of the authoritarian thug over the rule of law. ‘I do what I want, not what the laws says’. 

That is precisely what the TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party, formerly the Republican Party) wants to do but is far more subtle about it than this goon. The TTKP know that all it needs to do is gain enough power to make what the goon Adrian do legal. By legalizing what is illegal, thugs, grifters, tyrants, rapists, racists, bigoted haters and cynical liars get what they want. And, it is all perfectly legal!

Dishonorable judge Bob

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The Hill reports about insulting, cynical TTKP idiots and liars trying to deal with the Alabama court decision that says human embryos are children:

A few hours later, Haley seemed to walk back her initial comment.

“I didn’t say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling,” Haley told CNN, but she added she still believes “an embryo is an unborn baby.” [the tried and true “I didn't say what I said” defense]

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is being talked about as a potential running mate for former President Trump, evaded the question. “Well, I haven’t studied the issue,” Scott told reporters Thursday in South Carolina before taking a jab at Haley. 

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said he thinks an embryo is a child, but he also seemed confused as to what the decision even was. “We need more kids,” he said. “We need people to have an opportunity to have kids.” [Tuberville is completely clueless about what IVF is, but in his cynical arrogance, he blew his self-righteous smoke about it anyway]

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The Nation asks a question with an obvious answer: Clarence Thomas Broke the Law. Why Is He Not Being Prosecuted? -- The debate about whether Supreme Court justices are bound by ethics rules drew attention away from the fact that Clarence Thomas’s conduct violated federal laws

The answer: Merrick Garland is too gutless and incompetent to do his job.

TN reports that over about 20 years, multi-millionaires and billionaires Harlan Crow, Charles and David Koch, the Koch network, Wayne Huizenga, David Sokol, and Paul Novelly gave Thomas 38 vacations, 26 private jet flights, eight helicopter flights, 12 VIP passes to sporting events, attendance as a guest at the exclusive Bohemian Club, travel on a private jet to and lodging at Koch network summits at resorts in California tuition for his nephew in a private school, and a $267,000 loan used to purchase a luxury recreational vehicle. Crow also purchased the home in which Thomas’s mother lived and allowed her to live there rent-free. Thomas reported none of this. All of that violated existing federal law.

Garland ignores crimes by TTKP elites because he does not want to look “political.” Garland is an idiot and a traitor.

NYT Reveals (selectively) the role of the CIA in Ukraine since 2014

The NYT today published an article disclosing details of a long proxy war in which Ukraine has been a US client state for the past 10 years. It is, of course, selective. Probably it is timed to pressure Republicans to vote for continued funding. There is little else to be gained by admitting to the public after so many years, that covert operations were ongoing for all these years. Maybe next time they will discuss the US involvement in the Euromaidan-- a topic for another post. What they are now willing to put on the record, even in sanitized form should be enough to make NYT readers wonder how much of what they read there is factual. Following are some important quotes from the article. The link to full article can be found below. 

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(Excerpts fr. NYT article)

"The C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies provide intelligence for targeted missile strikes, track Russian troop movements and help support spy networks... A secret nerve center of Ukraine’s military... is almost fully financed, and partly equipped, by the C.I.A. “One hundred and ten percent,” Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy, a top intelligence commander, said in an interview at the base. 

The listening post in the Ukrainian forest is part of a C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border... The Ukrainians also helped the Americans go after the Russian operatives who meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And the C.I.A. also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence. The relationship is so ingrained that C.I.A. officers remained at a remote location in western Ukraine when the Biden administration evacuated U.S. personnel in the weeks before Russia invaded in February 2022. During the invasion, the officers relayed critical intelligence, including where Russia was planning strikes and which weapons systems they would use. “Without them, there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them,” said Ivan Bakanov, who was then head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U. 

The C.I.A.’s partnership in Ukraine can be traced back to two phone calls on the night of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Millions of Ukrainians had just overrun the country’s pro-Kremlin government and the president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his spy chiefs had fled to Russia. In the tumult, a fragile pro-Western government quickly took power.  [Left out is the story of just how and why the CIA was there to assist the new gov't; to fill in that gap I left a link to a transcript of Victoria Nuland's intercepted-- by Russia-- phone call from a month earlier in which she literally picks the "best" candidates for the new government. But this is BEFORE there was a Euromaidan Revolution OR a new government. This is before Yanukovych fled to Russia. How would she have known, and why would she be involved in picking an choosing Ukraine's next leaders? See BBC link below*--ed]. 

"The government’s new spy chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, arrived at the headquarters of the domestic intelligence agency and found a pile of smoldering documents in the courtyard. Inside, many of the computers had been wiped or were infected with Russian malware...He went to an office and called the C.I.A. station chief and the local head of MI6. It was near midnight but he summoned them to the building, asked for help in rebuilding the agency from the ground up, and proposed a three-way partnership. “That’s how it all started,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko said." 

Full article (long): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/the-spy-war-how-the-cia-secretly-helps-ukraine-fight-putin.html

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*Transcript of intercepted and leaked phone call of Victoria Nuland (now Undersecretary of State) discussing who should and should not be in the "next" Ukrainian government, which did not yet exist. This call took place before the Revolution and overthrow of Yanukovych in late Feb. of 2014. She is also pictured in meetings with Yanukovych shortly before the Euromaidan). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

Context: Victoria Nuland was then the top Europe-Russia official. Her boss was Joseph Biden who handled the Ukraine portfolio for the Obama Admin. Obama was skeptical of the program, and almost refused to send arms to Ukraine, while Biden championed US involvement from the start. Nuland was point-person on the ground.  Nuland is now Undersec. of State in Biden's admin. She is known as a hawkish neo-con type (her husband is the well-known neo-conservative,  Robert Kagan, who was a key architect and advocate of the Iraq  War). In 2019, he wrote a WaPo p-ed with his friend, current Sec of State,  Antony Blinken setting out a "new vision" for foreign policy.  Jake Sullivan then served as National Security Advisor to VP Biden, and is now National Security Advisor reporting directly to the president. In other words, the main foreign policy  players in the Biden admin are the same people he worked with during the period discussed in both the NYT article, and at the time of the intercepted Nuland call. These are "Liberal Interventionists" whose ideas are greatly influenced by neo-conservatism. Indeed, Nuland  Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003-2005, and then under Bush served as the US Permanent Representative to NATO. This was during the time that Bush promised-- against the will of France, Germany and other European states-- NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia.