4. Western involvement in Ukraine

Some Ukrainians complain that Western aid is too slow, late and insufficient for the country, which stands as a bastion against the Russians who, otherwise, would have invaded Europe – foolish and naïve complaints: the West is not a Good Samaritan to quickly meet all the wants and desires of the Ukrainians, nor is it the Amazon to deliver at the first request.

Preliminaries

If you want to find the real reasons for Western involvement in the Ukraine, you mustn’t frame Western involvement into the scenario of a Good Samaritan. After all, any country prioritizes its own interest, which is quite a natural thing to do. A more realistic picture can be derived from a selfish desire to bring benefits to the West and “contain” Russia as its geopolitical rival rather than do good to Ukraine.

Even before Yeltsin and his accomplices in Belavezha decided to dismantle the Soviet Union in 1991, before the horrors of the disintegration of the Soviet Union materialized themselves in different projects of “independence”, and very long before the Maidan coup of 2014 dropped the so called “multi-vector” policy pursued in the pre-Maidan Ukraine and put the last nail into the coffin of the treaty of friendship with Russia – the West was patiently applying soft power to foment the seeds of nationalism and russophobia n Ukraine and other national republics,

That policy can be traced back to Austro-Hungarian use of the Ukrainian factor against the Russian Empire and the unfortunate Lvov Russians who ended up in Talerhof. The most successful case illustrating this “divide et impera” (divide and rule) policy of the West in Russia is the German project of Vladimir Lenin who blew up Russia as a member of the anti-German alliance with his October coup in 1917.

Some scholars even go so far as to point to Bismarck as the trail-blazer of this policy, backing up the story with a fabricated quotation allegedly belonging to Bismarck:

“Russia’s strength can only be undermined by the secession of Ukraine. It is necessary to not only cut off Ukraine from Russia but also to confront them, to turn two parts of one people into each other and watch how brothers kill each other.”

The quotation went immediately viral precisely because it reflected the familiar scenario of games played by the West with Russia, or, rather, against Russia.

This policy in our days is advanced with the help of “soft power”

Joseph Nye popularized the concept of "soft power" in the late 1980s. For Nye, power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes you want. There are several ways one can achieve this: one can coerce others with threats; one can induce them with payments; or one can attract and co-opt them to want what one wants. This soft power – getting others to want the outcomes one wants – co-opts people rather than coerces them.

There is another more traditional wording for it: speak softly and carry a big stick.

This term is a quotation from a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt on September 2, 1901, in which he said the country must keep on training a highly efficient navy in order to back up the Monroe Doctrine. That is, back up what you say with a show of strength.

The Soviet heavy-handed propaganda turned out to be helpless before the soft power of the West which obtained its goals in the Cold War through persuasion rather than coercion that used to be the chief instrument of achieving the desirable result in the Soviet Union. 

The “Chicken Kiev” speech

Soft power often masks an aggressive agenda. In Europe there was a tradition of secret treaties, and the USA didn’t like it. Until 1991 the official course of the USA frowned on Ukrainian nationalism.

The USA regarded Europe with deep suspicion and disapproved of secret treaties, opportunistic alliances and zones of influence. Woodrow Wilson’s famous 14 points aimed at achieving an enduring peace, and point VI advocated for letting Russia “an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing.”

Ukrainians signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty as an independent state. Ukraine’s signing the Treaty was something the British and French leaders found unforgivable.  That initiative predisposed them to accept White Russian condemnation of the entire Ukrainian movement and Ukrainian independence as a German invention, and that Ukrainians were no better than Red Russian Bolsheviks.

Thus, it took some time for the policy of non-interference in Russian affairs to take a leap to the project of “Ukraine as anti-Russia” that was certainly hostile to Russia, and there were great politicians who understood it.

Thus, speaking in the Ukrainian parliament in August of 1991, President G. H. W.  Bush said: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."

Though President Bush turned out to be prophetic in his speech (as the history shows, nationalism appears to be really ‘suicidal” to Ukraine), the adherents of divide et impera policy in the USA were angry with Bush and after Bush’s speech American politicians who backed up Ukrainian nationalism, began to rule the rooster..  

The American establishment ignored all the five components of Roosevelt’s big stick diplomacy: to possess serious military capability, to act justly toward other nations, never to bluff, to strike only when prepared to strike hard, and to be willing to allow the adversary to save face in defeat: “Ukraine as anti-Russia” project was gaining momentum. 

The aggressive campaign of American establishment against the so called “Chicken Kiev” speech, held in the Ukrainian parliament by President G. H. W. Bush, marks the beginning of the official Western blessing to the project of “Ukraine as anti-Russia”.

This campaign joined up by all the 50 allies of the USA, meant that the West was not satisfied with the victory in the Cold War. The West wanted to see the dismantling not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire, but of Russia itself

The way of thinking of those who didn’t like the “Chicken Kiev” speech, was predictable and logical:  if the Germans managed to mastermind a regime change in Russia with their “Vladimir Lenin” project, why couldn’t demolition of Russia be achieved with the help of “Ukaraine as anti-Russia” project?

 The West led by the USA masterminded a coup that toppled a democratically elected government and set up a puppet junta in Kiev which launched a war against rebellious Ukrainian provinces for their refusal to recognize American-imposed impostors.

Without American-led 2014 coup that was the logical development of stirring-up the russophobic sentiment in Kiev, no “invasion” would have happened. NATO’s expansion to the East was bound one day to cross the red line of the Russian sphere of influence and bump into resistance. William Burns, who heads Biden’s CIA, put it like this:

“For Russia, Ukraine is the reddest of red lines.” [Abelow, 2022: 61]

 In 1991, the Soviet Union unexpectedly collapsed. The Warsaw Pact dissolved, and the newly born nation, the Russian Federation, denounced communism and extended the olive branch to the West. The olive branch was not taken, Quite the opposite thing happened: the United States and its NATO partners chose to capitalize on the desperate period of Russian history - specifically, the weakened economy and demoralized military - by making a provocative and threatening move to expand NATO closer to Russia’s doorstep.

Commenting on this decision, George Kennan, a renowned expert on Russia analysis and a highly influential American diplomat in the 20th century, as well as the author of the Containment Policy that eventually led to the fall of communism, stated in his 1998 interview with Tom Friedman of the New York Times:

“I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.”

Accepting Russia into NATO would have left it without its matter-of-fact target.