U.S. Could Reverse Post-Soviet Errors by Brokering Peace in Ukraine
In seeking global hegemony for the construction of a unipolar New World Order, American elites intensified the clash of civilizations. We can reverse that now. Will we?
Richard Vigilante has just published an excellent article describing how the United States can use the negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war to our own advantage and reverse the disastrous course on which our government set out nearly forty years ago:
Beware, warn some of my conservative friends. [Putin] will insist that negotiations touch on the “root causes” of the war as he sees them. That means he will want to roll back NATO expansion, which many in the West say should be off the table.
I think that is exactly wrong. NATO offers us the chance to make a cost-free concession that would look like a victory for Putin, serve as a tonic for Europe, and help us avoid future troubles.
In exchange for a decent peace in Ukraine, we should offer a timed U.S. exit from NATO, starting within the year and completed by, say, Jan 20, 2029.
Why would this be cost free? Because it is going to happen anyway. Europe’s indignant answer to Trump’s scolding seems to be “We’ll show you we can’t be pushed around. We’re going to re-arm and defend ourselves, so there.”
Briar patch anyone?
Vigilante goes on to discuss precisely how the U.S. foreign policy establishment went wrong after the fall of the Soviet Union, and he describes what motivated this gigantic miscalculation by our foreign policy establishment. He develops an interesting and highly instructive contrast between the approach of (staunch anti-Communist) Ronald Reagan and that of his successors, particularly George H. W. Bush. I strongly recommend that you read it.
Vigilante’s central observation is this:
Bush fancied himself a foreign policy sophisticate: a “player.” As such he cherished NATO as the vehicle by which the U.S. would remain a European power. (M.E. Sarotte, in his masterful Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Post-Cold War Stalemate gives the history in excruciatingly well-documented detail.)
Meanwhile most Americans’ response would have been ‘why would be want to run, and be responsible for Europe one minute longer than necessary?’
Alas the pre-Reagan faction in the GOP wanted precisely that. A fair date for the beginning of the populist rebellion in the GOP was just this decision that we must continue to play the Great Game, a decision benefiting only the ego of the players, who defined what we now call the “elite.” Within less than a decade that elite would render the GOP so obviously unfit to govern as to make rebellion inevitable.
I believe that Vigilante has it exactly right.
The U.S. relationship with Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union has been marked by extraorinary hubris among these supposedly liberal nations. The failure to assist Russia in finding a workable way of walking back from Communism toward something better was unconsionable. The U.S. plan appears to have been that Russia would have to adopt Western liberalism immediately and entirely or be subjected to denigration, harassment, and undermining of the governing regime for not being just like us after decades of totalitarian rule and no experience ever with classical liberalism.
That was obviously impossible, and it is fair to wonder whether, as Vigilante implies, the intent behind that attitude and consequent U.S. policy was to ensure that Russia would no longer be a world power and would thus place the United States in undisputed control over world events—and transfer enormous amounts of U.S. taxpayer money to arms manufacturers and other companies producing war-related goods and services.
The vision of the United States as world ruler (assisted by Europe, Japan, the Anglosphere, etc.) is evident in the post-Cold War concept that the globe was now a unipolar place with the United States in charge. President George H. W. Bush clumsily and all-too-revealingly bragged about this as the establishment of the New World Order.
The fall of the Soviet Union provided the opportunity for this effort, and furnished the rationale for it. In our supposed disappointment at Russia’s failure to become Little USA immediately, our foreign-policy community presented themselves as justified in their arrogrant and reckless pursuit of unchallenged power.
That was to be The End of History. Instead, America’s post-Soviet foreign policy exacerbated the ongoing clash of civilizations. Now our only wise course is to take the Nixon-Reagan approach: try to decouple Russia and China. Nixon did that by thawing relations with China (as is well-known), and Reagan did so by reaching out to the Soviet Union (likewise obvious), specifically Russia. President Trump has begun a process that could renew the Reagan approach.
It is instructive that those responsible for the disastrous Western isolation of post-Soviet Russia have continually undermined any possiblity of de-escalation, by demonizing Russia and accusing Trump of being a traitor for trying to improve relations with the Kremlin and avert what would probably be the most destructive war in human history.
The Bush-Clinton axis that pushed for world rule by U.S. elites with assistance from Europe and a few other high-income countries has shown not the slighest bit of interest in the welfare of the American people in this situation. The greedy pursuit of power over other countries has damaged the United States immeasurably. The United States should and must change course.