Blame the Deep State for Carnage in Ukraine - The American Conservative
By George D. O’Neill Jr.
From the onset of the Ukraine war, the corporate media, politicians, and all the controlled NGOs throughout America and Western Europe were lockstep in their claim that the Russian military action in eastern Ukraine was unprovoked and unjustified—an act of aggression that could not be allowed to stand.
There was one problem with this propaganda blitz: it was totally untrue. The Deep State—the government elites, intelligence community, and the military establishment—has spent decades threatening and provoking Russia by pushing NATO up against their border.
You do not have to like Russia to see this, and you can detest Vladimir Putin until the cows come home. The fundamental issue remains the same: the Russians view NATO on their border as an act of aggression and a threat to their national security, and we have known this for decades.
The record is clear and unassailable.
In 1990, as the Soviet Union was beginning to break apart and the possibility of peace throughout most of the world was in sight, the United States—in no less a personage than James Baker, U.S. secretary of State—pledged that NATO would not move eastward toward the Russian border. That promise was central to enabling the withdrawal of the Soviet military divisions from East Germany to facilitate the unification of the country. This commitment also provided the security necessary for the dissolution of power inside the Soviet Union. Without such a guarantee, the resistance to the breakup would have been intense and almost certainly violent.
At that point, it had been less than 50 years since Russia had been invaded. The horror of the Second World War cost the Russian people an estimated 25 to 35 million lives. In addition to the unimaginable sea of blood from that war, Russians well remember the many other invasions that have caused death, sorrow, and brokenness for an incalculable number of their fellow citizens. Since Americans have never experienced a foreign invasion, they have no concept of that horror. (The war of 1812 was a brief and small fight.)
Secretary of State Baker did the right thing to assuage a legitimate fear and facilitate the breakup and the freeing of hundreds of millions of people captive in the Soviet system. But before the ink was dry, the U.S. foreign policy establishment as expressed in NATO and the E.U. began breaking its word.