One Man's Buffer Zone is Another Man's War Crime: Russia, Ukraine, and Donbass: the Death of Diplomacy
“[A]ll nation-state borders everywhere have been created... through the resolution of competing claims to territory and sovereignty by deployments of power, including acts of insurgency and counterinsurgency.” — Sara Pursley, NYU
“Premier Khrushchev, on January 3, 1964, proposed an end to the use of ‘force for the settlement of territorial issues.’ … [But] No summit conferences were ever held to hammer into acceptable form any basic principle of international law touching territorial questions. A great political opportunity was indeed lost… [Two years later, President Johnson] opposed the use of force to resolve ‘territorial and border disputes’ in Europe; but he launched a war over such a cause in Vietnam.” — Justice William O. Douglas, International Dissent (page 112, 114-115)
In 2014, after Ukraine rejected closer ties with the EU in favor of a Russian economic alliance, Kyiv streets erupted, eventually toppling the government. Since then, eastern Ukraine has been a hotbed of conflict ignored by Western and European leaders for the past eight years while fighting has injured or killed 10,000 to 13,000 people, including civilians.
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| William O. Douglas, International Dissent (1971) |
“Our image of communism devouring the earth and Russia’s image of capitalism guided by greed and inhumanity are still strong. Yet, the two systems seem to be converging… The important point is that neither our Pentagon nor Russia’s Pentagon nor anyone else’s Pentagon has any major role to play in evolving cooperative regimes for dealing with disputes and dissents at the international level.” — Justice William O. Douglas, International Dissent (1971, paperback) [150, 154]
If you are young enough to have never heard the term, “ethno-state,” consider yourself lucky. Your elders preferred homogeneity to diversity when drawing borders because they assumed the former was more stable. No democracy has ever replaced a non-democratic system without foreign assistance from future trade partners, and no foreign corporation would expose employees and investors to a new regime without assurances of security and (favorable) rule of law. Once we agree investors want stability and military-driven economics require conflict to justify budgets, a self-generating cycle results. Were it that straightforward, you could stop reading here, rest your eyes, and ignore history knocking and asking to be let in.
"In Western European states, far-right parties have gained ground in recent years, and white supremacist populist beliefs are on the rise." -- Peter Grier, Noah Robertson, CSMonitor, February 25, 2022 [Emphasis mine]
As media has become more affordable and accessible, the appearance of diversity has increased, obscuring the fact that segregation based on race and religion have increased internationally since 1945. Think: India (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslim); Singapore (Chinese) and Malaysia (Malay); Czechia (non-Catholic) and Slovakia (Catholic); Northern Ireland (Protestant) and Republic of Ireland (Catholic); Israel (Jewish), West Bank (originally Christian), and Gaza Strip (Muslim); and so on. The generally higher birthrates of Catholics and Muslims compared to Protestants and non-Muslims appear to create tensions between the two religions as well as with others in democratic societies, though birthrates are notoriously difficult to predict and easily exaggerated. (Iran, for instance, attempted to reduce its birthrate, succeeded, then reversed itself and offered birth incentives.) Historically, Europe’s response to alleged Jewish political influence was exclusion or genocide, and only after the number of Jews in the West declined did the term Judeo-Christian gain favor. It is against this backdrop of continued conflict post-1945 that diversity, democracy, and their discontents must be evaluated. Russia’s recent response to Ukraine’s alleged NATO ambition presents an opportunity to explore the world as it has been, not as we have wished it to be.
"We’ll stand up for our allies and our friends and oppose attempts by stronger countries to dominate weaker ones, whether through changes to territory by force, economic coercion, technological exploitation, or disinformation." -- President Joe Biden, 9/21/21
“The Cold War is our greatest handicap [in establishing a credible, rules-based world order]. Mistrust on both sides is rampant. Our mass media are permeated with anti-communism… and so we move more and more on a collision course. Throughout history, preparedness has always led to war.” — Justice William O. Douglas, International Dissent (1971, paperback) [149-150]
The most important facts not taught in schools are that the Cold War never ended, and WWII did not stop in 1945. The number of partitions, secessions, civil wars, and coups from 1945 to 1991 ought to have forced Western history books to revise themselves and begin from 1511, Straits of Malacca included, but we are not yet at a point where truth and history can be natural partners. One reason is that the political status quo is incompatible with reality. For example, American students learn checks and balances and separation of church and state during a time when the Supreme Court is majority Catholic, its president Catholic, and the Speaker of the House Catholic. (Quite remarkable for a country where none of the founders were Catholic, with only one Catholic signatory on the Declaration of Independence.) Additionally, a large percentage of progressives consider the Democratic Party anti-war and the Republican Party pro-war despite knowing anti-war protesters and others were beaten by police outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in a city controlled by the Democratic Party and a Catholic mayor.
“Ignoring the press credentials that hung around his neck, the police shoved Thompson against a plate glass window as chaos and violence erupted all around him. ‘I went to the [1968] Democratic Convention as a journalist,’ [Hunter S.] Thompson wrote of the encounter, ‘and returned a cold-blooded revolutionary.’” — Douglas Brinkley, New Orleans, July 15, 2000
Those beatings occurred in Chicago, a city responsible for elevating Democrat Barack Obama to the White House. Glenn Greenwald aptly summarized President Obama’s contributions to war:
Obama’s most important value was in prettifying, marketing and prolonging wars, not ending them. They [the CIA] saw him for what U.S. Presidents really are: instruments to create a brand and image about the U.S. role in the world that can be effectively peddled to both the domestic population in the U.S. and then on the global stage, and specifically to pretend that endless barbaric U.S. wars are really humanitarian projects benevolently designed to help people — the pretext used to justify every war by every country in history.
Regardless of color, the more things have changed, the more they’ve stayed the same. Why, then, does it surprise anyone war has prevailed over diplomacy once again in 2022 under an American president who voted to support an illegal invasion of Iraq?
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East... We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people... How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. -- Harold Pinter (2005)
When considering diplomatic successes on nuclear deproliferation, particularly the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, it is mind-boggling to see the military-industrial complex succeed wholesale and worldwide. Indeed, the trillions of American dollars spent in Afghanistan make little sense unless Western governments, intelligence agencies, and allies (both public and private) were laundering money or enriching themselves through defense contracts.
“Americans spent the past two decades trying to build Afghanistan from the top down. Our military led the way, with huge sacrifice, and the American people spent more than $2 trillion on this effort… Our mission was not achieved… We—the American people, coming in peace—are what the world wants from us. What it doesn’t want are more Afghanistans.” — Reed Hastings (founder of Netflix) and Glenn Blumhorst, Peace Corps’ 2021 Anniversary Issue, WorldView
“It is reported that [Vladimir] Putin is the wealthiest man in the world.” — Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo, February 24, 2022, virtual Town Hall, answering question about the efficacy of sanctions against Russia
When I was born, Jimmy Carter had replaced Richard Nixon in the White House. After Carter, America slowly recaptured its prestige one word at a time from a peanut farmer who married his first love. That peanut farmer (and naval officer) won the presidency having spent just 11.5 million USD on primary campaign costs.
President Jimmy Carter’s confidence in democratic principles was not mere idealism. It was a direct result of studying and seeing war’s ravages, then realizing self-determination, if implemented properly, could mitigate humanity’s worst impulses. Unsurprisingly, when given a chance to wage war in the Middle East, President Carter declined and still managed, with German assistance, a clean slate for a new incoming president. Carter’s penchant for peace was not unique. A decade earlier, a new country entered the United Nations and delivered perhaps its greatest introduction:
“For us the essentials of the [U.N.] Charter are the preservation of peace through collective security, promotion of economic development through mutual aid and the safeguarding of the inalienable right of every country to establish forms of government in accordance with the wishes of its own people... We support these ideals because we realise that the well-being, the security and integrity of my country can be assured only on the basis of these principles. It is practical self interest and not vague idealism which makes it necessary for my country to give loyal support to these essential elements in the U.N. Charter... My country feels that money spent on weapons of war and armies is money wasted... Our army is small. Instead, we have devoted our resources to building homes for the people, schools and hospitals... We seek a welfare state and not a warfare state... If independence and freedom are not to be empty slogans then we must continue to spend as much of our resources as we can on fighting the only war that matters to the people – the war against poverty, ignorance, disease, bad housing, unemployment and against anything and everything which deny dignity and freedom to our fellow men. To fight this kind of war we need to live in peace with our neighbours.” (September 21, 1965, S. Rajaratnam, Foreign Minister of Singapore)
In our next fiscal year, that same country’s Ministry of Defence is set to receive the second largest amount of annual expenditures. Only the Ministry of Health will see more funding, presumably because of the country’s rapidly aging population and low birthrate. (Someday, an honest academic with training in sociology and statistics will study the relationship between military expenditures and domestic birthrates, but that person will not be me.) This country has no known enemies, one of the world’s most honest and diverse police forces, and some of the world’s best politicians. In the modern era, even when governments succeed, they somehow fail.
And yet, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter could say the following words with genuine sincerity: “We will, as a matter of national policy now in our country, seek to reduce the annual dollar volume of arms sales, to restrict the transfer of advanced weapons, and to reduce the extent of our co-production arrangements about weapons with foreign states. And just as important, we are trying to get other nations, both free and otherwise, to join us in this effort.”
This week, Democratic Speaker of the House and Catholic Nancy Pelosi announced Congress would send 600 million dollars to Ukraine for “lethal defense weapons” so Ukrainians can “fight their own fight.” (Finland, a sparsely populated country with little to offer in terms of natural resources, immediately signaled its willingness to receive similar largess, palms outstretched.)
What major events happened between 1965 to 1977 and 1977 to 2022 to cause a reversal of idealism? Increased globalization requiring safe trade on the high seas, the Vietnam War, the Cold War (then Soviet collapse), and 9/11. Inconsistent foreign policy decisions didn’t help but need not have been fatal. (For example, why is it acceptable for an American President to recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli but not Donbass as Russian?)
Afghan conflict and Soviet collapse are intertwined, and Russian students know the Soviet Union broke two years after its troops exited Afghanistan. If Russia believes the United States is on a similar path and using NATO expansion in order to artificially maintain influence east of Switzerland, it would explain President Putin’s recent decisions. Consider the following criteria: an economy dependent on military spending, especially to employ (and control) young men; a military-industrial complex dependent on foreign nations accepting secure transport of oil and gas; a substantial role as weapons supplier; far-flung military commitments lacking a unifying principle; imbalanced economic deals with so-called partners; no credible military spending audits; no credible civilian oversight of the military or intelligence agencies; suppression of freedom of speech, specifically through arbitrary or targeted online account suspensions or bans; and little support for independent journalists. If you had to choose one country today best matching the aforementioned factors, which one would you pick? I won’t answer that question. Instead, I’ll quote two Americans familiar with the 1960s and 1970s:
The American tradition: "doing good in the world, and especially among less fortunate peoples--as intelligently as possible, and always generously. No nation ever damaged itself by acting in that spirit." -- William H. Hessler, January 1962, The Peace Corps--Some Second Thoughts
“Sarge taught me that we carry two passports: one grounded in the soil of American democracy, which he served five years in the Navy to defend; another as a global citizen. He believed that seeing a person could be as important as any institution—could relieve misery, could nurture minds, inspire others, and could crack open a little further the gates long shut by ignorance, bigotry, or just sheer misunderstanding.” - Bill Moyers, Peace Corps’ 2021 Anniversary Issue, WorldView
The previous statement becomes more obvious when globalization is accepted as irreversible, whether land-based or sea-based. Stated another way, capitalism is surely the best economic approach, but only under one condition: if it expands consumer wealth and the middle class, improving equilibrium between central-government-planned growth and more diverse small-to-medium private enterprises. In short, all successful systems seek equilibrium, and all unsuccessful systems allow non-equilibrium for extended time periods, whether between government branches or between government and the private sector (especially banks). Furthermore, any economic or political paradigm sacrificing social cohesion on the altar of economic growth, whether internally or externally, will eventually fail because globalization has made borders more fictional than ever, even if capital remains more agile than labor.
If you agree with the above premises, then you understand no capitalistic economy can thrive if it excludes, antagonizes, or misunderstands one billion Muslims or one billion Chinese or one billion Indians. And yet, post-9/11, the US and EU, along with their mainstream media arms, have chosen a path cutting them off from two billion consumers and friends while driving those two billion people closer together. (Note: if Russia maintains respectful relations with Israel and India, a Russian-Pakistani-Iranian-Turkish-Chinese alliance could potentially harmonize Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.) If a culture based on truth is more important than wealth, and sanctions only effective if the entire world participates against a single isolated area, then on a relative basis over the next forty years, Asia is certain to be more successful than the Americas, even if people exposed only to Western media do not believe it.
“When it comes to cultural illiteracy, America is a recidivist. We failed to understand Iraqi culture, [and] now, many Iraqis see Iran as the lesser of two evils. Before that, we failed to understand Vietnam. Wherever our relentless military adventurism takes us next, we must do better.” — Baktash Ahadi, combat interpreter
Remember: the Cold War never ended, and Russia played the long game. Let’s hope Afghanistan and now Ukraine force some consistency in American foreign policy, as well as some much-needed humility. If Germany can make a comeback after sixty-five years—a single generation—and Russia can re-emerge thirty years after financial collapse, there’s no reason a post-9/11 America can’t also one day rejoin the ranks of civilized nations. Before that happens, however, 1511 must replace 9/11 in the American consciousness. This Halloween, I’m going as the second Protestant Reformation.
© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (February 26, 2022)
SSN 2770-002X
Dedicated to fmr President Jimmy Carter, a sincere politician.
“We must seek more humane ways to resolve recurring conflicts. The few decades ahead are probably the last chance to do this.” — William O. Douglas, International Dissent (1971)
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