By Roger D. Harris on March 7, 2021
Anti war protest in San Francisco. Photo: David Bacon
Speaking before the UN on March 2, Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada identified the breach of the Minsk agreements, with the encouragement of the US, as the precursor of the present crisis in Ukraine. Nicaragua, too, noted before the UN that “NATO has insisted on ignoring the [Minsk] agreements.”
Expansion of NATO in Europe
After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the supposed end of the first cold war, instead of NATO being disbanded, the opposite occurred. There was no “peace dividend” and no honoring of the promise that NATO would not expand any further. Instead, NATO stampeded east towards the borders of the Russian Federation adding fourteen new members of former USSR republics and allies.
According to the Cuban government: “The American determination to continue the progressive expansion of NATO towards the borders of the Russian Federation has led to a scenario, with implications of unpredictable scope, that could be avoided.”
Former President of Bolivia Evo Morales commented: “NATO is a serious threat to the international peace and security. Its record of invasions and aggressions prove it. Now, its expansionist attempt is one of the main reasons for the situation in Ukraine.”
Even before the US-orchestrated coup in Ukraine of 2014, the US’s fateful decision in 2006 to draw Ukraine into NATO posed an existential threat to Russia. By December 2021, according to “realpolitik” international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, a US-armed Ukraine had become a de facto member of NATO, crossing a redline for Russia. Mearsheimer concludes, “the west bears primary responsibility for what is happening today.”
Expansion of NATO worldwide, including Latin American
In its worldwide expansion, Colombia has been incorporated into NATO as one of the “partners across the globe.” While Russians clashed with Ukrainians in Europe, Colombian and US warships conducted “naval exercises” near Venezuelan territorial waters, including deployment of a Yankee nuclear submarine.
The Orinoco Tribune comments from Venezuela: “These military drills constitute new evidence of a US and NATO attempt to expand the conflict in Ukraine and bring it to Latin America.” Venezuelan Minister for Defense Vladimir Padrino responded to the war games: “Why so much imperialist ostentation? Is it a replica of NATO expansion in the Mediterranean of America? Drug trafficking, the war in Arauca, systematic murders, and terrorist groups are not fought with nuclear submarines. I reject it categorically.”
NATO, it should be understood, is an army in the service of the US empire. Viewing it simply as an alliance of nominally sovereign entities obscures that it is commanded as a tool of US foreign policy in its stated quest of world dominion; that is, “full spectrum dominance.” The “alliance” members must fully integrate their militaries under that command along with purchasing US war equipment and offering up their own citizens as troops.
Upsides of war for the US
War is a great diversionary tactic for Joe Biden, whose popularity has been slipping due to a lackluster domestic performance. The US empire has much to gain: further unifying NATO under US domination, reducing Russian economic competition in the European energy market, justifying increasing the US war budget, and facilitating sales of war materiel to NATO vassals.
NATO has dumped over a trillion dollars in arms and facilities into the border countries next to Russia and continues to this day to pour lethal weapons into Ukraine. The leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi C14 recently bragged on YouTube (while other voices are censored): “We are being given so much weaponry not because as some say ‘the west is helping us,’ not because it is best for us. But because we perform the tasks set by the west…because we have fun, we have fun killing.”
Downsides of war for Ukraine and Russia
More than 14,000 people have been killed in the eastern Ukraine region of Donbas in warfare between ethnic Russians and Ukrainian regular military/right-wing paramilitaries in the eight years since the coup. The self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, beleaguered enclaves in the Donbas of largely ethnic Russians, seceded from Ukraine and were recognized by Russia on February 21.
The semi-governmental (over 80% US government funded) Rand Corporation’s playbook for the US and its allies says it all: “pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress – overextend and unbalance – Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.”
The conflict could have ruinous consequences for the Russian Federation, according to western sources and even some people who identify as left in Russia. And, of course, for Ukrainians of all ethnicities there is no winning in a war.
It is difficult to think what other options Russia has to defend itself. Perhaps there are some, but surely they are slim. It should be clear that the US has continually been the aggressor even if some do not agree with the Russian response. As Phyllis Bennis with the Institute for Policy Studies argues, the US provoked this war.
Impact on Latin America and the Caribbean
As a bonus for the US, according to Juan S. González, the US National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, the sanctions against Russia are “by design” intended to hurt Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, all targeted by Washington for regime change.
Journalist Ignacio Ramonet expects the blowback from sanctions on Russia, which are causing global inflation of commodity prices, will adversely impact poor and working people throughout the hemisphere. Tourism will be hurt by blocking Russian planes, especially in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Conversely, higher commodity prices for petro products, minerals, and grain may benefit exporting countries such as Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil.
Following the latest round of “sweeping” US-imposed sanctions on Russia, their Foreign Ministry announced, “we have reached the line where the point of no return begins.” Such sanctions are a form of warfare as deadly as bombs, as the experience of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua attest.
Both Brazil and Argentina have resisted calls for sanctions against Russia after their presidents visited Russia. In keeping with Mexico’s tradition of working to end conflict through diplomacy and dialogue, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated, “We’re not going to take any type of economic reprisal.”
Severing Russia from Europe
The peaceful integration of Russia with the rest of Europe would be a great threat to the US empire. A unified or even a cordial Europe could truly herald the end of US hegemony. The long-game geopolitical goal of preventing the unification of Europe may well be the fundamental aim of US foreign policy in that continent.
What would become of “US strategic interests” if peace were to break out in Europe, and Russia would become partners with Germany, France, and Italy? A potentially more independent Europe, including Russia, would challenge the US-dominated Atlanticist project.
The extreme hostility that the US took to the Nord Stream 2 project, which would have piped Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, went beyond the narrow economism of favoring US liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers. Where Washington’s earlier efforts of imposing illegal unilateral economic sanctions on its NATO ally faltered, the current conflict will surely discourage any rational and cooperative economic association of Russia with its western neighbors.
The severing of Russia from the rest of Europe is a tremendous victory for the US imperial project. This is especially the case, when there were recent moves in the direction of economic, cultural, and political exchange, which have now been reversed.
Views from the Latin American and the Caribbean
If only the outrage over the Russian invasion had some ethical grounding by what is misleadingly called the “international community,” but is in reality the US and its subalterns. Biden’s touted “rules-based order” is one where the US makes the rules and the rest of the world follows its orders, in contradiction to the Charter of the UN and other recognized international law.
The Cuban government advocates a solution that guarantees the security and sovereignty of all through peace negotiation. Their statement adds: “History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine beyond NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.”
Cuban journalist Ángel Guerra Cabrera laments: “our region witnessed flagrant US violations of those principles in Guatemala, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama, the last three through direct invasions. Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are current examples of a US policy that flatly denies its assertion, not to mention Puerto Rico.”
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva comments: “we do not want to be anyone’s enemy. We are not interested, nor is the world, in a new cold war…which is for sure dragging the whole world into a conflict that could put humanity in danger.”
If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that the end of endless war will come with end of the US imperial project that provoked this crisis.
Roger D. Harris is with the human rights group, Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English