American interventions in Eurasia in my lifetime have, without exception, led to even worse problems for America. We should not play with fire in Ukraine. We must stop our ongoing intervention in Ukraine. Now.
In 1953, our Operation Ajax overthrew a democratically elected Iranian government, leading to seeming stability for 25 years under the Shah. But Iranians overthrew the Shah, rightfully blaming the USA for his existence in the first place, and for almost 45 years the USA has contended with an implacably hostile revolutionary government in Iran. It is, literally, our fault.
In the 1980s, the USA created modern transnational Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan to attack the Soviets. Ideological descendants of those terrorists, Al Qaeda, attacked our embassies in Africa less than 20 years later and then took down the Twin Towers in New York in 2001. Had Reagan not created international Islamic terrorism in the 1980s, 9/11 would not have happened. The USA created the War on Terror over 40 years ago. We still suffer the consequences since the terrorist movement Reagan’s America created still bites its creator.
In 1996, Bill Clinton organized a US bipartisan intervention in the Russian presidential election. At the time, Boris Yeltin’s popularity was in single digits. Clinton’s intervention, celebrated on the cover of Time at the time, was successful. Those among us who condemn Putin’s intervention in the 2016 US Presidential election ignore our own far more successful intervention in Russian politics. Such is the sanctimonious hypocrisy of our body politic.
But Yeltsin and his family were corrupt and by ’98 a Russian corruption investigation threatened to take them down. As shown in Navalny’s video Putin’s Palace, a political unknown, Vladimir Putin, appeared on the Russian scene, discredited the investigator, and saved Yeltsin. Like politicians everywhere, Yeltsin paid his corrupt debt, brought Putin into government, and anointed him as the successor. But had the USA not successfully intervened in the ’96 Russian election, there would be no Putin. Putin is blowback from U.S. election interference.
In 2014, popular demonstrations against a democratically elected but unpopular President in Ukraine started with broad support. Although small in numbers, Ukraine’s far-right gained an outsized role due to their organization and violent militancy. Their massacre of their own protestors led the way to the coup advocated by the US State Department’s woman on the ground in those days, Victoria Nuland (“Fuck the EU” for negotiating early elections and “we want Yats now” who was in power four days later.)Macdonald Davis
Many Americans, after the events of 6 January 2020, believe that violent attempts to overthrow democratic process is illegitimate – at least in the USA. President Biden makes this argument with welcome vigor. Yet we celebrate the regime in Ukraine that descended from a coup against a democratically elected government – a coup the USA sponsored. Many Americans believe that attempts by foreign powers to interfere in our elections is illegitimate. And those Americans forget (or never read their own leading news magazines) that we intervene in foreign elections and our success is championed as a great victory for … what exactly?
After the 2014 coup, the Ukrainian far right, which really does have Nazi origins, was integrated into their security services and the military. Their influence in those parts of the Ukrainian state has spread like a cancer. The United States government knew, and knows, this. Yet we support it. We hope this far right-wing infected government will somehow defeat Russia. This war seems to have two possible outcomes. The more likely: we will wake up one day and find the Russia has conquered all it wants in the east and south of Ukraine. The rump Ukrainian state, perhaps also partly digested by Poland and Romanian, ceases to be a threat to European security. Less likely: Ukrainian resistance fortified by western arms threatens to prevail against Russian vital interests.
Imagine a future where Chinese influence in Mexico or Canada threatens to make that nation a Chinese satellite. Imagine military actions in that state bordering on ours, sponsored by the Chinese. The USA, even if diminished in global reach as China has ascended, would never tolerate it. If the Chinese believed that their support of military action in Mexico or Canada to bring that country into Chinese orbit will not be challenged by all means the USA has available to it, including nuclear escalation, the Chinese would be surprised. We showed in Cuba in the early ‘60s that we will threaten nuclear war to prevent an existential threat near our homeland. The same with Russia concerning Ukraine. Should the Ukrainians begin to win, this is the time for all of us to be truly frightened of the consequences of the fire that Obama, Clinton, and Nuland lit in 2014 when we provoked and sponsored a coup in Ukraine. The support of this writer once provided Bill Clinton, then Obama, then Hillary Clinton, then Biden, shames him.
The USA, in many ways, created the current crisis. We offered Ukraine a path to NATO membership 15-ish year ago and ignored Russia’s protests about its unacceptability. We sponsored a coup against an unpopular but democratically elected government in 2014. We knew that very far right elements among the Ukrainian dissidents were instrumental in the success of that coup. We fostered and trained the Ukrainian military as that far-right cancer spread in Ukraine’s security and military apparatus. These blunders could be worse than Operation Ajax nearly 70 years ago, or our creation of Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan 40 years ago, or our successful intervention in Russia’s presidential election 25 years ago. Consistently, when the USA intervenes in Eurasia in my lifetime, we create much worse problems for the United States down the road. We need to stop supporting Ukraine immediately.
