War and Peace in Ukraine: Part three of three

Guest Post:

A warning to Ukraine. The U.S. has its own interests. It is an imperial power. 

Today's Guest Post concludes by reversing the polarity of the Ukraine narrative. What if America isn't the Good Samaritan bystander, looking out for the little guy?

The three-part Guest Post began with Eisenhower's warning about the business of war. Post-WWII America has been characterized by repeated involvement in wars that could go on for years because for most Americans back home life went on, business as usual. We intervened. We fought proxy wars. Our money, mostly someone else's blood. 

What if this isn't a war about Ukrainian sovereignty and a peaceful European order? What if this is another move in the chess match of empires and would-be empires, another iteration of interventions in Indochina, in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, in the oil states of the Middle East, and in Latin America? What if this war is really about our interest in isolating Russia and interrupting what had been a mutually advantageous Russian-European oil trade? 

Eisenhower warned us.

Gary Miller is Emeritus Professor of History at Southern Oregon University. He has studied and written about foreign affairs for four decades.

Gary Miller

Guest Post by Gary Miller 

The road toward the end of hostilities must begin somewhere. It makes sense to focus on negotiations after the end of the current offensive. However, it must be considered a long shot, given the intransigence of Ukraine and Russia during earlier peacekeeping efforts. 

 

Any movement in the belligerents’ current postures must account for two issues, one from each side. Russia demands that Ukraine agree not to join NATO, and Ukraine insists that Russia end its occupation of Crimea. It may be possible to begin by solving less compelling issues, such as the exchange of prisoners and recovery of human remains, but in the end, it may come down to two symbols: NATO and Crimea.

 

The comparison of WWI trench warfare to the stalemate in Bakhmut provides an image that captures some of the horrors of combat in Ukraine. A comparison could be more compelling by utilizing battles involving US forces; Vietnam: Battle of Khe Sanh (January-July 1968) and Battle of Hué (January-March 1968); Iraq: second Battle of Falluja (November 2004-January 2005), where examples of the horrors of combat are also exposed and perhaps more familiar to contemporary audiences.

 

If the Spring-Summer Offensive does not change the course of the war, what should be the form and function of diplomatic action? Herb Rothschild, in his Guest Post here, rightly distrusts the “national security establishment” to sufficiently push for peace while primarily answering to the leaders of the military-industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower warned about half a century ago. This will come about, Rothschild wrote, by Americans pressuring their government and therefore the national security experts, to push for meaningful dialogue with first the Ukrainians (America’s proxy) and then the Russians. 

 

But does the US still have the respect and fear of the Europeans, making it likely that if we change our minds, they will follow? After the diplomatic disasters taken by former President Trump, the Europeans are much less willing to permit American leadership than they were a few years ago. We certainly have no right to lecture the Ukrainians on what is and is not worth sacrificing for.

 

A good friend and intelligence officer who served in Vietnam reminded me recently how he viewed the Ukraine-Russia War and the ability for the Americans to lead the road to a peaceful solution. The bitter taste of the Second Indochinese War still has the people of the world suspicious of America. My friend said that it appeared to him that the current war parallels what occurred in Vietnam, with the roles of the United States and the Soviet Union (now Russia) reversed. An independent nation (South Vietnam/Ukraine) is invaded by a world power (United States/Russia) with an outside major country sitting on the sidelines (U.S.S.R./United States) in many ways reaping the benefits of a war without spilling their own blood.

 

A warning to our Ukrainian friends: the Americans are not to be trusted. Their foreign policy follows the dollar, not a quest for peace and (your) security—unless guaranteed by bayonets, loans, “open trade,” and nuclear weapons. They prefer their wars to be no more than nine innings and will do nearly anything to avoid going to extra innings. An important caveat to the general “avoidance of the extra innings rule” comes into play if the Americans keep a positive balance sheet on the NYSE and, at the same time, keep Uncle Sam’s body count relatively low, as occurred in Afghanistan. Until those factors change, those of us desperately wanting a peaceful conclusion to the war must look to another broker to lead the initiative than the United States. And certainly not rely on the “American people” to rise up for their troops to withdraw and arms to stop flowing. That would take a massive reform of our educational system to allow a free mind to understand both President Dwight Eisenhower and writer George Orwell. 

“Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the worldview of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.” 

                 George Orwell, 1984

 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]