Russia-Ukraine conflict: The war has been 30 years in the making. Many saw it coming

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the one consistent demand Russia has had is that NATO should not extend eastwards towards Russia, and definitely not to Ukraine. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

More than anything else, the Ukraine war should wake us up to what “the West” stands for. Or at least, vigorously remind us of it.

Read the news reports and opinion pieces on all those hallowed American, British and west European media outlets, and what should strike any thinking person are the assumptions on display—the “West” is more civilized, morally superior and generally entitled in every sense to pass judgement and preach to the rest of the world.

Clearly, the spirit of colonialism never died. Nor has racism. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the comments made by correspondents covering the Ukraine crisis for leading American and British news channels—that “this isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan”, “these (refugees) are Christians, they’re white, they’re very similar to us”, and so on.

These journalists were experiencing shock and awe at the fact that “blonde and blue-eyed” people can be bombed (an actual comment that the BBC aired).

“Shock and awe”— the use of overwhelming force at the outset of a conflict to break the enemy's will to resist—was the publicly announced strategy of the US and its allies when they began carpet-bombing Iraq in 2003 on the absolutely false pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

But then, as someone pointed out on social media, when the West invades a country, it is “liberation”; when someone else does so, it’s “genocide”.

I do not at all support Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, yet it may have been inevitable. History has its own logic, and for 30 years, the West—more specifically the US and NATO—has been determinedly—and foolishly—making sure that Russia would strike back one day, when it finally ran out of patience.

But one can find hardly a mention of this in Western media or debates.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the one consistent demand Russia has had is that NATO should not extend eastwards towards Russia, and definitely not to Ukraine.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact had been birthed to fight the Cold War. With the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact gone, the Cold War was over. Why then should NATO expand except to insult and needle a weakened Russia?

In 1992, the then-US secretary of state James Baker promised then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin that NATO would not expand “an inch”. Yet, starting from the late 1990s, NATO has been continuously extending its reach.

This move was criticized by experts from across the ideological spectrum. George Kennan, the American diplomat who was one of the principal strategists of the Cold War, warned in 1998 that the expansion of NATO would be a “tragic mistake”, “there is no reason for this whatsoever” and would evoke “a bad reaction” from Russia.

In 2014, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, hardly a Russia-lover, commented on NATO’s considering Ukraine for membership by asking a simple question: “Do we know where we are going?” and said: “To Russia, Ukraine can never be a foreign country.”

The philosopher Noam Chomsky, as ideologically distant from Kissinger as possible, echoed him in 2015 when he told an interviewer that “the idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader” and that Ukraine's desire to join NATO “is not protecting Ukraine, it is threatening Ukraine with major war.”

And here is the coup de grace. In 1997, senator Joe Biden, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated that NATO expanding to the Baltic states would provoke a “vigorous and hostile reaction from Russia”.

Yet, the West persisted. The violent 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine that overthrew pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych was plotted by the US State Department and executed through a network of activist organizations and neo-Nazi militia secretly funded by the CIA—for the full story, watch the deeply-researched documentary Ukraine On Fire. Pro-US regimes have ruled Ukraine since then, pursuing a NATO membership, and pushing Russia ever closer to military action.

That is the history of the current conflict. But this war has also exposed the West’s moral duplicity. The West represents “liberal democratic values”, right? What do these values say about banning Russian news channels, and shutting out the other point of view? Yes, of course, state-owned Russian channels would be airing propaganda, but so is Ukrainian media, which is posting a dozen fake videos of brutality and heroism every day, and which Western media’s fact-checking systems are allowing to go viral and misinform millions of people?

What liberal democratic value is served by banning Russian sportsmen, pianists and ballerinas, many of whom have protested the invasion? Even physically challenged athletes set to participate in the Paralympics have been sent home. Why on earth should the world’s No. 1 tennis player Daniil Medvedev be asked to denounce Vladimir Putin as a condition for being allowed to play at Wimbledon? Are not these acts as much a violation of human rights as China clamping down on its artists and musicians if they express an opinion that Beijing doesn’t like?

And the West’s moral stance appears even more ridiculous when it comes to how it has been helping Ukraine, for whom every Western leader’s heart apparently bleeds. Despite repeated pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the West will not declare Ukraine a no-fly zone, because then NATO forces will be mandated to take on the Russian air force. The West will not even supply 30-year-old MiG fighters to Ukraine. President Biden has okayed another $800 million of weapons to Ukraine, but says it will be “exceedingly difficult” to reach them to the country. Meanwhile, the European Union continues to buy nearly a billion euros worth of oil, coal and gas from Russia every day.

As John Mearsheimer, perhaps the greatest living American geopolitical scholar, said seven years ago, “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

Many prescient people saw this coming.

George Kennan’s essay "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", published in the July 1947 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, foresaw the Cold War and laid the foundation for Western policy towards the Soviet Union and the communist bloc for over four decades. The Cold War officially ended in 1991. Kennan was horrified, when in 1998, the US Senate ratified the expansion of NATO. He told an interviewer: “We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way… I was particularly bothered by references to Russia as a country that is just dying to attack western Europe… Of course, there will be a bad reaction from Russia, and then (the NATO expanders) will say that we always told you that is what the Russians are—but this is just wrong.”

This is exactly what has happened. It is the people of Ukraine who are suffering. And, at the expense of innocent lives, the rest of us are learning valuable lessons about what the West stands for.

Also read: Russia-Ukraine Crisis LIVE| We have plans against NATO and will respond to threats, says Russian diplomat