Diabolical

Is Vladimir Putin a freedom-hating madman bent on conquest regardless of the human cost? Why did he invade Ukraine?

The incontrovertible fact is that Putin's action came in response to prior US actions. Without those actions, there would be no war in Ukraine. But we can't see the relevance of this fact when our focus is locked on Putin's moral failings. The US set the stage for the devastation of Ukraine, and it's high time we faced up to it. 

To understand why Washington deliberately provoked this war, we need some context. If there's a mastermind who set all this in motion, it's Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor in the Carter administration. On July 3, 1979, on Brzezinski's advice, President Carter authorized the first shipments of arms to mujahedin guerrillas battling the socialist government of a rapidly modernizing Afghanistan. Brzezinski later described to a reporter for Le Nouvel Observateur his elation when the Soviets took the bait and dispatched troops into the country, leading to a ten-year quagmire that severely weakened the Soviet Union. When the reporter asked Brzezinski if he regretted his role in the destruction of Afghanistan, he said he had no regrets over giving the Soviets their own version of Vietnam. 

In 1997 Brzezinski published a book called The Grand Chessboard in which he identified the chief threat to US global power as an economically integrated Eurasian bloc stretching from Germany to China. The key to disrupting this emerging alternative center of power was Ukraine. He advised tearing away Ukraine from the Russian orbit and aligning it with the West. 1997 was also the year NATO began its eastward expansion, a move that served no purpose except to threaten Russia, especially with the 2008 announcement that Ukraine, right on Russia's doorstep, was on track to becoming a member. Keep in mind that NATO, essentially the Pentagon's European wing, was established to counter Soviet military might in eastern Europe. The Soviets withdrew from East Germany in 1989 on the promise – delivered by George HW Bush's Secretary of State James Baker – that NATO would expand "not one inch" beyond a reunified Germany. When Bill Clinton broke that promise eight years later, he revealed that the function of NATO had decisively shifted from defense to power projection in Europe.

But it wasn't until 2014 that Brzezinski's plan began to be realized. In that year Ukraine's Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich rejected a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of a more attractive Russian offer, unwittingly providing the spark that activated the US plan to turn the country decisively to the West. A $5 billion investment and years of painstakingly laying the groundwork finally paid off when a coup toppled the elected government of Ukraine and drove a wedge between Kiev and Moscow, exactly as Brzezinksi had hoped. Thanks to a tapped phone call from US State Department official Victoria Nuland, we know that Ukraine's subsequent president, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was handpicked by Washington. Crimea, historically a Russian region that was added to Ukraine during the Soviet era so as to streamline administration, immediately rejected the coup government and voted to rejoin its homeland. 

Also overwhelmingly Russian, the Donbas in eastern Ukraine refused to recognize the new government and declared independence, triggering a military assault on the region from the illegal post-coup Kiev regime. The assault killed many thousands of Russian-speaking citizens, a figure that might have been much higher without military assistance from Moscow. Given that self-described neo-Nazis had provided the muscle behind the coup and that the new regime was explicitly anti-Russian – going so far as to ban Russian from public discourse – the persecuted residents of the Donbas had every right to secede. A Russian invasion of Ukraine to protect the Donbas was forestalled only by a German-French initiative, the Minsk Accords, that were supposed to force Kiev to cease hostilities and recognize autonomy for the Donbas. But the government never granted autonomy, and recently both of the leaders of Germany and France at the time, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, admitted that Minsk was a ruse intended to buy time while the West built up Ukraine's military in anticipation of the inevitable Russian intervention in its civil war, a conflict resulting directly from US-backed subversion. 

To this day Ukraine is the world's only country with neo-Nazi regiments officially integrated into its military. Ukraine also happens to be the country through which the original Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. That the US continues to back its government just goes to show the moral compromise Washington is willing to inflict on itself in order to isolate and weaken Russia. 

Volodymyr Zelensky got himself elected president by running on a peace and anti-corruption platform. He promised to reconcile with Russia by ending the war in the Donbas and pledging that Ukraine would remain militarily neutral, meaning that it would never join NATO. But when Putin brought out his army and demanded a halt to the flow of weapons and a guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality, Zelensky responded by ramping up shelling of the Donbas, essentially daring him to invade. Why did Zelensky not only fail to fulfill his promises but deliberately antagonize Russia? 

The answer is that Ukraine, despite holding elections since the coup, is a puppet state which has banned any political party that espouses resumption of normal relations with Russia. The boss calling the shots in Kiev is Uncle Sam, giving the lie to the claim that the US is pouring weapons into Ukraine to defend democracy. Like Afghanistan, the country is being sacrificed for the greater glory of America's unipolar world order. The war has now killed 100,000 Ukrainians and driven out millions more, all of it conveniently pinned on Putin. The so-called neoconservatives running Washington don't care about Ukrainians any more than their imperialist predecessors cared about Afghanis. 

In order to keep Russia trapped in the Ukraine quagmire, the US wielded its influence over its puppet regime to quash peace initiatives from Turkey and Israel. To ensure that Germany didn't change course and re-establish economic ties with Russia, President Biden ordered the US navy to bomb the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that Russia had built at great expense so as to export natural gas directly to Germany. Since Biden had already stated that "there will be no longer Nord Stream 2" if Russia invaded, it was obvious who was behind the bombing even before Seymour Hersh revealed details of the operation on the basis of information provided by a whistleblower. 

What the US has done and continues to do to Ukraine is nothing short of diabolical. Numerous US analysts, including Cold War architect George Kennan, warned years ago that incorporating Ukraine into NATO would set off alarms in Moscow and lead to a "bad reaction" that NATO boosters would then cite as after-the-fact justification for their aggressive policy. In 2008 Ambassador to Russia William Burns wrote to the secretary of state that "Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)." That policymakers continued to pursue this course anyway just goes to show that they wanted war and welcomed the destruction of Ukraine so long as it served US interests. Yes, Putin invaded and unleashed the terror, but it was the puppet masters in Washington who entrapped him in an action he would otherwise never have taken. What difference does it make if Putin is a sinner when Biden is the devil? 

Note that Ukraine still hasn't been officially incorporated into NATO. If it had been, the rest of the alliance would now be committed to sending in their armies to fight off the Russians. But the whole point of this operation was to get Ukraine to do the fighting, just like the mujahedin in the 80s. We want to weaken Russia, setting the stage for the overthrow of Putin, without spilling any of our own blood. Thus Ukraine, though consistently promised membership for years, is still de facto NATO only, armed to the teeth and a major threat to Russia but in no way subject to protection by the alliance. It's this coldhearted and calculated manipulation of Ukraine, seducing its government into doing our bidding and then shedding crocodile tears for its people when they get torn to pieces, that makes this operation so twisted, so appalling. 

What was unprovoked was not Putin's long-delayed invasion but the eastward march of NATO, which began even before he took office. True, Putin launched a devastating attack on Chechnya, but snuffing out a secessionist movement in your own country in no way indicates expansionist aims. His August 2007 airstrikes in South Ossetia, often cited as an example of his aggression, came in response to Georgia's invasion of the breakaway province on Russia's southern border. The troops comprising his alleged invasion of Crimea served only to ensure an orderly vote. Likewise, his excursion to Syria at the invitation of its government has prevented that country from becoming another failed state following US intervention. In short, Putin never did anything to invite NATO's drive to the Russian border. 

But none of this computes as long as we're fixated on the bloodthirsty Russian tyrant. It's the classic case of obsessing on the mote in the other man's eye while overlooking the plank in one's own. You say Putin invaded Ukraine to peel off some of its territory? Well, in 1999 President Clinton flouted international law and bombed Yugoslavia so as to grant independence to Kosovo, a failed state since its birth. The post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan merely illustrates the principle that two wrongs don't make a right. The invasion of Iraq had no justification whatsoever, nor did the bombing of Libya or the still ongoing occupation of Syria. But it's so much worse than mere hypocrisy. Not only is it none of our business how the descendents of the Soviet Union arrange their national boundaries but we created the crisis in the first place. The Russian-speaking people of Crimea and the Donbas showed no inclination to secede prior to US-backed subversion of Ukraine. 

To put an end to the proxy war against Russia, we must stop fueling it with ever more destructive arms. Europeans belatedly realizing the US concocted this thing out of thin air – imposing the first ground war onto the continent since 1945 – have started demonstrating against the continued flow of weaponry into the war zone. By and large, however, the Western public has acquiesced to the propaganda, buying into the idea that Putin is just inexplicably evil. We could turn that around and claim that the neocons running Biden's foreign policy are evil, but that's too easy. For any genuine understanding we must turn to psychology.

Every one of us is born a narcissist. We come into this life with a sense of omnipotence. If your needs aren't meant, you just let out a cry and your obedient servant comes running. But the infantile paradise, as Barbara Dowds explains in her superb book, Beyond the Frustrated Self, eventually fractures. Right around your first birthday you realize Mom is her own person. Not just an extension of your will, she's separate from you and has her own life. Most of us make the transition from omnipotent to healthy narcissism just fine. But some people never quite let go. For them narcissism isn't just a trait shared by all humans but their defining feature. Rather than face the pain of separation from Mother, the narcissist clings to the illusion of omnipotence and continues to regard the Other as an object, not a person in her own right. In the end everyone is an object to be manipulated rather than an equal to be respected. 

Key to the psychology of the narcissist is the "splitting defense." Though we all have a dark side consisting of negative emotions and violent wishes, the narcissist projects all that onto the Other. Where conflict occurs it's always the other guy's fault. How could you be bad when the definition of good is you? That's clinical narcissism in a nutshell. 

The individual pathology spills easily into collective narcissism by way of group identification. Because the narcissist is essentially a baby, he has a hollow core and compensates for his weak ego by identifying with a powerful group. No group on earth is more powerful than the United States. For the narcissist, being American is like a drug. Neocons are narcissists high on power, both the power of the nation as a whole and whatever personal power they manage to acquire within the federal bureaucracy or corporate media. Power corrupts not just individuals but the nation whose government is overrun by soulless power worshippers. It's for this reason that the US, in terms of how it relates to other countries, fits the diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder. 

Grandiose and preoccupied by fantasies of unlimited success and power, Uncle Sam considers himself "special," someone who should only associate with other high-status countries. He's the "exception" who thinks rules of conduct apply only to others. With his sense of entitlement he expects automatic compliance with his every command. He routinely takes advantage of others to achieve his ends. Unwilling to empathize he casually tosses aside those he exploits when they no longer serve his needs. Though he thinks he's better than those around him, in a state of perpetual insecurity he still craves their admiration. 

A diagnosis of clinical narcissism implies that the malignancy is ingrained and enduring. Indeed, looking back 70 years we find exactly the same pathology at work in the Korean War. According to every mainstream source, the war began June 25^th, 1950 when the Soviet-backed army of the north invaded the south. This myth was exploded by Bruce Cumings, who chaired the history department at the University of Chicago when he published a two-volume history of the Korean War. Cumings places responsibility for the war squarely on the US occupation army in the south, which backed US-educated Syngman Rhee as leader in opposition to a grassroots democratic movement. Only after Rhee had launched numerous raids on the north that killed thousands did the north finally respond with a decisive invasion so as to reunify the country. What began as a proxy war against Soviet Russia became a war with China that left upwards of four million dead. The division of Korea remains in place to this day, along with the lie that the US was totally innocent and wanted only to protect democracy and freedom.

The same exact lie was employed the following decade in Vietnam when the US claimed to be intervening in a civil war it had in fact created by propping up a dictator in the south and refusing to abide by the 1954 Geneva Accords, which called for unified national elections. The US rejected the Accords because the winner of Vietnamese elections, it was widely believed, would surely have been Ho Chi Minh. By contrast, Putin, who actually is intervening in a civil war, is blasted as an imperialist aggressor foiling Washington's noble designs. 

So innately good and pure is America that we can't comprehend how Russia would feel threatened by US missiles stationed within a stone's throw of its border. Don't they know our warheads have halos? Why would Ukrainians in the south and east want to secede from their country just as it's undergoing westernization? Don't they want a piece of the American Dream? How could democracy-lovers like us possibly be implicated in the rise of neo-Nazism? There's only one possible answer: it's all lies! The Russkies are up to their tricks again! 

The real shocker for the Biden administration has been the refusal around the world to accept the American spin on the war. Except for English-speaking countries, the EU, Japan and South Korea, virtually no country has agreed to abide by anti-Russia economic sanctions, which have done little to weaken Russia while inflicting substantial damage on Germany and other European countries dependent on Russian gas. Under their own narcissistic spell, the neocons couldn't imagine that most people in the Global South would recognize the US role in fomenting the conflict and might even empathize with Putin given the bind the West imposed onto him. 

Empathize with Vlad? They must be crazy!

To avoid escalating this to Armageddon we must put ourselves in Putin's shoes. Whereas the West is fighting for abstractions like sovereignty and democracy, neither of which have applied to Ukraine since 2014, Russians are fighting for their survival as an independent people beyond the reach of the great global bully. They know all too well – and Putin's enduring popularity reflects this – that the US would like nothing more than to encircle Russia with military bases and erect an anti-missile system that nullifies its nuclear ace in the hole. Remember when George W Bush unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty? Russians sure as hell do, and they're well aware of ABM systems recently installed in Romania and Poland. Though Putin is condemned by the self-righteous Washington elite for nuclear blackmail over Ukraine, in reality he's just giving us the facts. If we go too far in this proxy war and threaten the integrity of Russia, which absolutely includes Crimea, he just might push the button. Provoking war with a country that has 6000 nuclear bombs is so stupid there's no way of comprehending it outside the model of mental illness. 

We have a lot to be proud of in this country. The West in general has a right to be proud. We birthed the modern world. We developed the advanced technologies that are enabling people everywhere to step out from the shadows of endless toil and insecurity. But a little healthy narcissism can turn malignant. As a result we are now at a crossroads. To avoid undoing all our achievements, we must renounce the great con, the neocon, accept our frailties as a nation and reach out with humility to the Other in recognition of our common humanity. 

Peace to all.