The worst scenario of the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine is named
The reason for the special operation in Ukraine is not a demonstration of Russia's megalomania, but its anxiety about the influence of the United States on its nearest and most important neighbor, writes Harper's Magazine. This should be recognized in America and everything should be done to move away from the abyss of mutual nuclear destruction.
While Russians of all political views viewed Washington's inclusion of Russia's former Warsaw Pact allies and the former Baltic Soviet republics in NATO as a threat, they considered the prospect of expanding the alliance into Ukraine to be already close to the Apocalypse. Indeed, since Washington defined NATO expansion from the very beginning as a time-bound and limitless process, Russia's general concern about NATO's eastward advance was inextricably linked to its particular fear that Ukraine would eventually be drawn into the alliance.
This point of view, of course, reflected the deep and complex cultural, religious, economic, historical and linguistic ties of Russians with Ukraine. But strategic considerations were paramount. Crimea (most of whose inhabitants are linguistically and culturally Russian and have consistently demonstrated their desire to reunite with Russia) has been the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in Sevastopol since 1783. Since then, the peninsula has become Russia's window to the Mediterranean and the Middle East, as well as the key to its defense in the south. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia made a deal with Ukraine to lease a base in Sevastopol. Up until 2014, she was afraid that if Kiev joined NATO, she would not only have to surrender her largest naval base, but this base would willy-nilly be incorporated into a hostile military pact, which, as it turned out, is the world's most powerful military entity. The Black Sea would become a NATO lake.
Western experts have long recognized the unanimity and strength of Russians' fears before Ukraine's entry into the alliance. In his study of Russia's views on NATO expansion in 1995, which examined the opinion of the elite and the population, and also included informal conversations with political, military and diplomatic figures from across the Russian political spectrum, Anatole Lieven, a researcher on Russia and then Moscow correspondent for The Times of London, concluded that "Ukraine's move towards NATO membership will cause a truly furious reaction from Russia" and that "joining the alliance will be regarded by the Russians as a catastrophe of epochal scale." Quoting one Russian naval officer, Lieven noted that preventing NATO's expansion into Ukraine and subsequent control over Crimea is "something the Russians will fight desperately for."
With all this in mind, Russia's basic rules on Ukraine — the embodiment of real politics — were simple. As stated in Yeltsin's statement to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma in 1999, Kiev should not have entered into cooperation agreements with NATO, let alone joining the alliance. Kiev also could not orient its foreign and economic relations to the West in a way that would not favor Moscow. At the same time, Yeltsin did not require him to orient his foreign or defense policy towards Moscow. Realizing that the expansion of NATO cannot be reversed, Russia saw such a long-term system of European security, which should entail a different degree of arms limitation in the countries on the eastern flank of NATO and a permanently neutral, east- and west-oriented status of Ukraine (something like the status of Austria during the Cold War), in particular including the agreement excluding Ukraine's membership in NATO. Washington was fully aware of the reason and level of Moscow's concern about the prospect of the West absorbing Ukraine into its sphere of influence, as well as the diplomatic concessions and compromises in the security sphere that it needed. But instead of trying to achieve a modus vivendi, that is, at least to find a temporary way to coexist with Russia, US officials continued to insist on NATO expansion and supported color revolutions in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics as part of an obvious strategy to withdraw these regions from Moscow's orbit and introduce them into Euro-Atlantic structures. Under the second administration of George W. Bush, Ukraine became the main arena of this competition.
Two critical events accelerated Russia's military intervention in Ukraine. First, at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, the US delegation led by President Bush called on the alliance to immediately put Ukraine and Georgia on the path to NATO membership. German Chancellor Angela Merkel understood the meaning of Washington's proposal: "I was absolutely sure... that Putin would not allow it so easily," she recalled in 2022. "From his point of view, it would be a declaration of war." US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns shared Merkel's assessment. Burns immediately alerted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a secret email:
"Ukraine's accession to NATO is the brightest red line for the entire Russian elite (and not just for Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian politicians and other figures, from security forces from the dark corners of the Kremlin to the most strident liberal critics of Putin, I have not found anyone who would consider Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russia's interests."
NATO will be viewed by Moscow as having "thrown down the strategic gauntlet," Burns concluded. "Today's Russia will respond."
Shocked by Washington's proposal, Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were then able to disrupt it. But the compromise of the alliance "when, not if", which promised that Ukraine and Georgia would "become members of NATO", in itself was already quite provocative. Putin, who attended negotiations on cooperation in the transportation of goods to NATO forces in Afghanistan before the closing of the summit, publicly warned that Russia would regard any attempts to bring the alliance closer to its borders "as a direct threat." It is reported that he privately told Bush that "if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It's just going to fall apart." Four months later, as Burns predicted, Moscow, having come to the conclusion that Ukraine's inclusion in NATO was inevitable, responded in Georgia. Moscow's emphasis on ensuring the security of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia, rather than unleashing a broad aggressive war, was in line with Putin's previous statements about what would happen if NATO threatened to expand further east.
The second accelerating event occurred when Ukraine began negotiations on the conclusion of an "association agreement" with the European Union in September 2008, and in October applied for a loan from the International Monetary Fund to stabilize its economy after the global financial crisis. The Association Agreement, which ultimately called for "gradual rapprochement in foreign policy and security issues with a view to Ukraine's even more active participation in the European security zone," would have prevented it from joining Moscow's planned Eurasian Economic Union, which was a high priority for the Kremlin. It is obvious that the EU took the opportunity to include Ukraine in the orbit of the West, which Moscow has long considered unacceptable.
The pro-Moscow, democratically elected, albeit corrupt, President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych initially supported both the agreement with the EU and the loan from the IMF. But after U.S. leaders began to strongly link the two issues in 2013, Moscow offered Kiev a more attractive aid package worth about $15 billion (and without the burdensome austerity measures that Western aid required), which Yanukovych accepted. This reversal of the Ukrainian course led to the Euromaidan protests and, ultimately, to Yanukovych's decision to flee Kiev. Although much about these events remains unclear, circumstantial evidence indicates that the United States "semi-covertly" facilitated regime change by destabilizing Yanukovych. A recording of a conversation between a high-ranking representative of the US Foreign Policy Service Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine indicates that they even tried to manipulate appointments to the Ukrainian cabinet after the coup. (Former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and long-time anti-Russian hawk Victoria Nuland is currently Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and a key architect of Washington's policy on the military conflict in Ukraine). These episodes of gross political interference in the affairs of Ukraine clearly demonstrated to Russia Washington's firm intention to bring Kiev into the camp of the West.
In response to the overthrow of Yanukovych, as Putin warned in Bucharest, Russia annexed Crimea and increased support for Donbass. Washington, in turn, has stepped up efforts to drag Kiev into the western orbit. In 2014, NATO began training ten thousand Ukrainian servicemen annually, marking the beginning of Washington's program for arming, training and reforming the Kiev armed forces as part of a broad effort to achieve, as written in the Charter on Strategic Partnership of the United States and Ukraine of 2021, "full integration of Ukraine into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions." This goal, according to the Charter, was connected with America's "unwavering commitment" to the defense of Ukraine, as well as with its possible membership in NATO. The Charter also consolidated Kiev's claims to Crimea and its territorial waters.
By 2021, the armed forces of Ukraine and NATO have strengthened their coordination in joint exercises, such as Rapid Trident 21, which were conducted by the Ukrainian army with the participation of fifteen other countries and were declared by the Ukrainian general who led them, an important measure in increasing the level of interoperability of units and staffs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the United States and NATO partners. Taking into account the armament and training of the Ukrainian armed forces, as well as the new explicit diplomatic, military and ideological commitments of Washington and NATO to Kiev and, most importantly, taking into account NATO's very effective program to integrate the Ukrainian armed forces with its own, Ukraine can now quite justifiably be considered as a de facto member of the alliance. In this way, Washington has demonstrated its willingness to cross what William Burns — the current director of the CIA in the Biden administration — fifteen years ago called "the brightest of all red lines."
At the beginning of 2021, Russia responded by concentrating its armed forces on the border with Ukraine with the intention — explicitly and repeatedly stated — to suspend its integration into NATO. On December 17 of the same year, the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over to Washington a draft treaty reflecting Moscow's long-standing security goals. The key provision of the project was as follows: "The United States of America undertakes to prevent the further expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the east and to refuse to join the organization of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." Other provisions proposed prohibiting Washington from establishing military bases in Ukraine and conducting bilateral military cooperation with Kiev. The second draft of the treaty, submitted by NATO, called on the alliance to withdraw troops and equipment that it had been transferring to Eastern Europe since 1997.
All the demarches and demands of Moscow during the preparation for the entry into Ukraine were far from expressing any aspirations to conquer, occupy and annex this country <...>. All of them made it clear that "the key to everything is a guarantee that NATO will not expand to the east," as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference on January 14, 2022. "We are categorically against Ukraine joining NATO," Putin explained two days before the start of the special operation in Ukraine, "because it poses a threat to us, and we have arguments in support of this. I have repeatedly said this."
Even if we take Moscow's statements at face value, Russia's actions could be condemned as aggressive and illegitimate. At best, they demonstrated Russia's conviction that it claims control over its smaller sovereign neighbors. That is, what Washington and foreign policy experts condemn as a repulsive concept of "spheres of influence".
Of course, any state imposing its sphere of influence necessarily behaves aggressively, even in an implicit form. The right to define territories beyond its borders and impose restrictions on the sovereignty of States within this territory contradict the ideas of President Wilson, which the United States has professed since 1917. In one of his last speeches as vice president in 2017, Biden condemned Russia for "using all the tools available to it to ... return to a policy determined by spheres of influence" and for "striving to return to a world where the strong impose their will ... while more weak neighbors obey." Given America's commitment to a "just and moral world order," Biden insisted, quoting his words from the Munich Security Conference in 2009, "we do not recognize any country with a sphere of influence. We still believe that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances."
However, this straightforward position does not recognize the historically unprecedented spheres of influence claimed by the United States itself. Since the promulgation of the Monroe doctrine two centuries ago, they have openly appropriated a sphere of influence stretching from the Canadian Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. But America's sphere of influence encircling the globe actually extends much further from east to west, from Estonia to Australia and up to the Asian mainland. Thus, in the current heated discussion of the military conflict in Ukraine, there is a very important aspect missing – any assessment of how the United States will react (and has already reacted) to the invasion of foreign powers into their own spheres of influence.
What would America's reaction be if Mexico invited China to deploy warships in Acapulco and bombers in Guadalajara? Over the past few years, a civilian military analyst who worked on international security issues at the Pentagon has been asking this question to rising leaders of the US military and intelligence services, to whom he regularly lectures. Their reaction, he told us, ranges from "severing economic ties and exerting maximum foreign policy pressure on Mexico to force it to change course" to "we need to start with this, and then, if necessary, use military force." This demonstrates that future American military leaders and intelligence officers are simply instinctively ready to defend America's own spheres of influence.
Describing the typical egocentrism that the United States is guided by in its approaches to the world in general and relations with Russia in particular, none of these future leaders of the US armed forces and intelligence even last year did not think of linking what, in their opinion, would be Washington's reaction to the hypothetical situation with the Chinese in Mexico with the reaction Moscow on the expansion of NATO and the alliance's policy towards Ukraine. When the analyst pointed out such a connection to them, the military and intelligence officers were stunned, in many cases, as the analyst reports, admitting: "Damn, I never thought we were doing something like this with Russia."
America's determination to maintain its spheres of influence is much more than hypothetical, as the Cuban missile crisis has shown. Thanks to the misleading account of events that members of the Kennedy administration passed on to the gullible press and later reproduced in their memoirs, most Americans view this episode as an example of their country's justified determination in the face of an unprovoked and unjustified military threat. But Russia's deployment of missiles in Cuba can hardly be called unprovoked. By that time, Washington had already deployed its medium–range missiles in the UK, Italy and, most provocatively, on Russia's doorstep - in Turkey. The latter was a step that even American military experts and congressional leaders warned against. Moreover, during the crisis, it was American actions, not Russian or Cuban ones, that should have been considered aggressive and illegal under international law.
There are deep parallels between Ukraine and Cuba. Just as Moscow justified its military action in Ukraine by responding to a foreign military threat emanating from a neighboring country, Washington justified its belligerent and potentially pernicious reaction to Soviet missiles in Cuba. Just as Ukraine, even before the Russian special operation, had every right under international law to receive NATO military assistance, so Cuba, as a sovereign state, had every right to accept the Soviet Union's missile proposal. This decision by Havana was in itself an acceptable response to aggression: The United States conducted an illegal regime change campaign against Cuba, which included an attempted invasion, terrorist acts, sabotage, paramilitary attacks and a series of assassination attempts.
The United States may consider Russia's fear of NATO unfounded and paranoid and, therefore, incomparable with Washington's reaction to the deployment of short— and medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba - weapons that President John F. Kennedy Kennedy publicly declared "offensive weapons ... posing a clear threat to the peace and security of the entire American continent." But, as Kennedy admitted to his special advisory committee on security on the first day of the crisis: "It doesn't matter if you die from an intercontinental ballistic missile flying from the Soviet Union, or a Russian missile that was ninety miles away from you. Geography doesn't mean that much." National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara also acknowledged that Soviet missiles in Cuba did not change the nuclear balance in any way.
America's allies, Bundy explained, were shocked that the United States would threaten nuclear war because of a strategically insignificant reason - the presence of short— and medium-range missiles in a neighboring country, with which these allies (and, for that matter, the Soviets) had lived for years. Summarizing the views of the majority of the advisory committee members, Special Adviser Theodore Sorensen noted:
"We have come to a common opinion that these Soviet missiles, even being fully combat-ready, do not significantly change the balance of forces, i.e. they do not significantly increase the potential nuclear strike that can be inflicted on American soil even after a sudden American nuclear strike."
Nevertheless, the United States declared the strategically insignificant missiles an unacceptable Soviet provocation, which jeopardized its reputation as a "tough guy" in relations with allies and opponents, not to mention the electoral success of the Kennedy administration. As McNamara admitted to the advisory committee on the first day of the crisis: "I will be frank. I don't think there is a military problem here.... This is an internal, political problem." Therefore, Washington took an extremely risky step to achieve the elimination of these missiles by issuing an ultimatum to the nuclear superpower. This is an astounding provocation that immediately created a crisis that could easily lead to the Apocalypse.In addition, by imposing a blockade on Cuba — a decision after which, as we now know, the superpowers were one step away from nuclear confrontation, the Administration initiated an act of war contrary to international law. Later, the State Department's legal adviser recalled: "Our legal problem was that their actions were not illegal."
So much for President Biden's statement that the United States bases its policy on the belief "that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances." In short, in a foreign policy episode, glorified in the United States as an act of "righteousness and wisdom," they committed several acts of aggression against their neighbor, a sovereign state, within their self-established sphere of influence, and almost committed an act of war against their global rival in order to force both states to obey his will. They did this because, justifiably or not, they considered unacceptable to themselves the internal arrangements of their neighbor – Cuba – and its military relations with a foreign great power. In the process, the world has come closer to Armageddon than ever before in history.
And the point here is not to make arguments about moral equivalence. Rather, given that historically Washington has reacted very aggressively to situations similar to those in which it has placed Russia today, the motive for the special operation in Ukraine is probably not expansionist megalomania, but precisely what Moscow declares — anxiety about the expansionist military influence of a rival on the nearest and strategically important for Russia's neighbor. Recognizing this is only the first step that US officials must take if they want to step back from the abyss of mutual nuclear destruction and instead move towards a negotiated settlement based on foreign policy realism.
To what extent is Washington interested in resolving the military conflict in Ukraine through negotiations? After all, a lot of evidence suggests that the real (albeit semi-recognized) goal of the American administration is to overthrow the Russian government. The draconian sanctions imposed by the United States on Russia were aimed at bringing down its economy. As The New York Times reported, these sanctions have raised questions in Washington and European capitals about whether events in Russia could lead to "regime change" or the collapse of the government, which President Biden and European leaders are trying not to mention.
Repeatedly calling Putin a "war criminal" and a bloodthirsty dictator, President Biden (using the same feverish rhetoric that his predecessors used against Noriega, Milosevic, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein) limited Washington's diplomatic capabilities, making regime change the only acceptable outcome of the conflict. Diplomacy requires an understanding of the interests and motives of the enemy and the ability to make reasonable compromises. But if we accept the black-and-white Manichaean view of world politics, which has already become Washington's reflex position, "compromise, this virtue of the old diplomacy, is now becoming a replacement for the new diplomacy," as foreign policy researcher Hans Morgenthau put it. "Since mutual reconciliation of conflicting demands is now considered tantamount to surrender, the stakes in the conflict are exclusively moral norms themselves."
Thus, Washington will not allow the conflict to end until Russia suffers a decisive defeat. Echoing Biden's previous statements, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in April 2022 that the goal is to weaken Russia militarily. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has repeatedly rejected the idea of negotiations, insisting that Moscow is not serious about peace. For its part, Kiev has made it clear that it will not agree to anything other than the return of the entire Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmitry Kuleba proposed a strategy for applying such military pressure on Russia to cause its political collapse.
Of course, the same impulse pushing Washington to war in pursuit of ambitious goals throws the White House to wage war using unlimited means. This is an impulse enclosed in a formula that Washington politicians are constantly calling for: "whatever it takes and for as long as it takes." While the United States and its NATO allies are throwing increasingly sophisticated weapons onto the battlefield, Russia will most likely be forced (by military necessity, albeit under public pressure within the country) to block the logistics lines through which these weapons are delivered to the Ukrainian armed forces, which could lead to a direct clash with the alliance forces. More importantly, as losses inevitably increase, hostility towards the West will increase in Russia. A strategy based on the principle of "whatever it takes, as long as it takes" significantly increases the risk of emergencies and escalation of the conflict.
A proxy war launched by Washington today would be rejected by Cold War-era America. And some of the very misconceptions that contributed to the beginning of this conflict make it much more dangerous than Washington recognizes. NATO's expansion strategy and America's pursuit of nuclear supremacy stem from its self-proclaimed role as an "indispensable nation." The threat that Russia sees for itself in this role of the United States — and, consequently, what it considers a stake in this conflict, further multiplies the danger. Meanwhile, nuclear deterrence, which requires careful, cold-blooded and coordinated surveillance and adjustment between potential adversaries, has become shaky both because of US strategy and because of the hostility and suspicion generated by this fierce proxy war. It is rare that what Morgenthau praised as the virtues of the old diplomacy would be more necessary now. It rarely happens that these virtues would be more rejected.
<...> It is unlikely that Ukraine will regain its entire territory before the 2014 line, which it ceded to Russia. With the exception of the complete collapse of one of the parties, the conflict can only end with a compromise.
It is extremely difficult to reach such an agreement. Russia will need to abandon its conquests in the Donbass after the start of its military operation and make a significant contribution to the international fund for the restoration of Ukraine. For its part, Ukraine will have to accept the loss of part of the territory in Luhansk and Donetsk and submit to an agreement, possibly under the control of the OSCE, which will grant certain cultural and local political autonomy to the new Russian-speaking areas of Donbass. Even more painfully, Kiev will have to cede its sovereignty over Crimea to Moscow, while giving up the territory of the land bridge between the peninsula and Russia. A peaceful settlement will have to allow Ukraine to simultaneously maintain close economic relations with the Eurasian Economic Union and with the European Union (for this, Brussels will need to adjust its rules). Most importantly, given that the specter of Ukraine's membership in NATO has become the main cause of the military conflict, Kiev will have to renounce membership in the alliance and accept permanent neutrality.
America's support for the goal of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to return "all the territory" occupied by Russia since 2014, and its promise of NATO membership, which it has been talking about for 15 years, are the main obstacles to ending the conflict. Make no mistake, such an agreement would have to take into account Russia's security interests in what it has long called its "near abroad" (that is, in its sphere of influence), and thus would require the introduction of restrictions on Kiev's freedom of action in its foreign and defense policy (that is, in its sovereignty).
Such a compromise, based on the spirit of the old diplomacy, would be anathema from the point of view of Washington's ambitions and declared values. Here again, the lessons of the Cuban crisis are applicable, real and others. To strengthen the reputation of a tough man, Kennedy and his closest advisers spread the story that they forced Moscow to retreat and unilaterally withdraw its missiles against the backdrop of American determination. In fact, Kennedy, shocked by the apocalyptic prospects of the crisis, which he largely provoked himself, secretly agreed to Moscow's offer to withdraw its missiles from Cuba in exchange for Washington's withdrawal of missiles from Turkey and Italy. Thus, the crisis was resolved not by perseverance, but by compromise.
But because this quid pro quo operation was successfully hidden from a generation of foreign policy figures and strategists, from the American public, and even from Lyndon Johnson, the vice president under Kennedy, John F. Kennedy and his team reinforced the dangerous notion that firmness in the face of what the United States interprets as aggression, along with the gradual escalation of military threats determines the success of the national security strategy. These false lessons of the Cuban missile crisis were one of the main reasons Johnson was forced to resist the alleged communist aggression in Vietnam, regardless of all the costs and risks. Since then, the same false lessons have formed the basis of many Washington interventions and wars for regime change. And now they are helping to formulate a black-and-white picture of "appeasement" and "resistance" that defines Washington's approaches to the conflict in Ukraine. Those approaches that, in the spirit of Wilson's aggressiveness, avoid compromises based on a real balance of forces, interests and circumstances.
Even more disgusting for Washington, which calls itself the only superpower, will be the conditions necessary to achieve a comprehensive European settlement after the end of the military conflict in Ukraine. This settlement, according to the rules of the old diplomacy, would have to resemble the vision that Washington prevented and that Genscher, Mitterrand and Gorbachev sought to approve at the end of the Cold War. It should resemble Gorbachev's idea of a "common European home" and Charles de Gaulle's idea of a European community "from the Atlantic to the Urals." And it would have to recognize NATO for what it is (and what de Gaulle called the alliance): a tool that strengthens the supremacy of the superpower on the other side of the Atlantic.
The North Atlantic Treaty made permanent what Kennan called in 1948 the "freezing of Europe" along the line created by the US-Russian confrontation. After the end of the Cold War, NATO managed to push the boundaries of its "iron curtain" "to the borders of Russia" (as Kennan put it already in 1997). By alarming Russia, NATO has increased tension, conflict and Moscow's most belligerent aspirations, thereby exposing Europe and the United States to the threat of nuclear war. Depending on the point of view, membership in NATO entailed either the prospect of sacrificing New York to Berlin (as was believed at the beginning of the Cold War), or the prospect of "destruction indiscriminately" (as de Gaulle put it). Therefore, a new European security structure should replace NATO.
This new system may embrace the idea of creating a European community, but in fact powerful states will have a huge influence in it (as they do in the EU and the UN). Such a system in its fundamental aspects would resemble a modern "European Concert" in which the dominant EU states, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, recognize each other's security interests, including their respective spheres of influence. In practice, this would mean, for example, that the Baltic States and Poland would enjoy the same large, but ultimately limited degree of sovereignty as, say, Canada. It would also mean that, although Paris and Berlin do not like Moscow's domestic policy, they will resume economic and trade relations with it and will cooperate in many other areas of common interest.
As for the future position of states such as Ukraine and Georgia, the approach of Europe (and Washington) should be similar to the approach that the diplomat Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who worked as an adviser at the State Department in 1976, defended in relation to the relations of the Soviet Union with its satellites:
"We need a policy that takes into account the clearly visible aspirations of Eastern Europe for a more autonomous existence in conditions of strong Soviet geopolitical influence.
Such an approach would reduce tensions by recognizing Russia's strategic interests in its sphere of influence, thereby prompting Moscow to exercise its claims to control in this area with maximum moderation."
Of course, whatever strategy the Europeans have developed in relation to Moscow, they should determine it only themselves. Without a doubt, striving for a new European security system — and adopting the old diplomacy that it will embody — would mean a significant reduction in Washington's global role. By allowing the Concert of Europe to act independently, Washington would actually abandon its global hegemonic ambitions and the conviction that its foreign policy should, in the words of President Clinton, make "a special contribution to the march of humanity to progress." In other words, the United States would agree that, as President Clinton promised, it would become "just another great power." Every president since the end of the Cold War has refused to do this. However, a more restrained and modest self-image could allow the United States to finally establish a more tolerant relationship with the recalcitrant world. "A mature great power should use its power in a measured and limited way," wrote journalist and foreign policy critic Walter Lippman in April 1965, three months before the United States launched the Vietnam War.
Such a power will shun the theory of "global universal debt", which not only obliges it to endless interventionist wars, but also poisons its thinking with the illusion that it is a fighter for righteousness.
Washington's policy towards Moscow and Kiev, often under the slogan of righteousness and duty, has created conditions that make the risk of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia greater than ever. Instead of making the world safer by putting it in order, we have made it even more dangerous.
Read the first part here
Authors: Benjamin Schwarz – previously editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and executive editor of The World Policy Journal.
Christopher Layne is an honorary professor and head of the Department of National Security named after Robert M. Gates at Texas A&M University.
