"American conduct has indeed cost Ukrainian lives, but the fault is not inadequate backing for Kiev. Rather, Washington and its allies have repeatedly fueled an unnecessary conflict.

First was the determination to dominate Europe by expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders, contra multiple assurances given Moscow’s leaders and repeated warnings of the furies that might be unleashed. This issue was the casus belli for Vladimir Putin last year, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently acknowledged.

Second was trampling on the newly established Russian Federation’s geopolitical interests and treating it as a power of no account, especially in the Balkans. The illegal attack on Serbia had a hugely negative impact on public as well as elite opinion in Russia. (The Serbian public has returned the favor, overwhelmingly looking toward Moscow rather than Brussels.)

Third was cynically treating the Minsk agreements, negotiated to resolve the Donbass conflict, as a tactic to win time rather than a solution to restore peace. Western leaders accused Moscow of violating an agreement they now admit they themselves broke and never intended to keep.

Fourth was refusing to treat seriously the Russian leader’s threats to respond to growing military ties between Ukraine and the West, which essentially took NATO into Ukraine rather than Ukraine into NATO.

Fifth was disrupting the Russo–Ukrainian negotiations early last year that might have yielded an accord ending the conflict after weeks rather than months or years.

Finally, sixth was inflating Ukrainian military ambitions in a fight that increasingly looks like a battle against Moscow to the last Ukrainian. Starr and Piontkovsky imagine that the U.S. could have enabled Kiev to painlessly sweep aside the Russian hordes."

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/base-american-policy-in-ukraine-on-american-interests/

On Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 8:25:55 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
> "American conduct has indeed cost Ukrainian lives, but the fault is not inadequate backing for Kiev. Rather, Washington and its allies have repeatedly fueled an unnecessary conflict.
>
> First was the determination to dominate Europe by expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders, contra multiple assurances given Moscow’s leaders and repeated warnings of the furies that might be unleashed. This issue was the casus belli for Vladimir Putin last year, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently acknowledged.
>
> Second was trampling on the newly established Russian Federation’s geopolitical interests and treating it as a power of no account, especially in the Balkans. The illegal attack on Serbia had a hugely negative impact on public as well as elite opinion in Russia. (The Serbian public has returned the favor, overwhelmingly looking toward Moscow rather than Brussels.)
>
> Third was cynically treating the Minsk agreements, negotiated to resolve the Donbass conflict, as a tactic to win time rather than a solution to restore peace. Western leaders accused Moscow of violating an agreement they now admit they themselves broke and never intended to keep.
>
> Fourth was refusing to treat seriously the Russian leader’s threats to respond to growing military ties between Ukraine and the West, which essentially took NATO into Ukraine rather than Ukraine into NATO.
>
> Fifth was disrupting the Russo–Ukrainian negotiations early last year that might have yielded an accord ending the conflict after weeks rather than months or years.
>
> Finally, sixth was inflating Ukrainian military ambitions in a fight that increasingly looks like a battle against Moscow to the last Ukrainian. Starr and Piontkovsky imagine that the U.S. could have enabled Kiev to painlessly sweep aside the Russian hordes."
>
> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/base-american-policy-in-ukraine-on-american-interests/

"As usual, with the current surge of Venezuelans coming across the southern border, the American news media,
both mainstream and right-leaning, focus on the immediate “crisis” while usually neglecting to mention or downplay
any role that American foreign policy has in creating or exacerbating that crisis.

For example, it is true that Venezuelans are now trying to migrate en masse to the United States because they are
exhausted by years of destruction of a once prosperous Latin American economy primarily by the authoritarian socialist
governments of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.

However, the U.S. government, going way back to the Cold War, has interpreted the Monroe Doctrine—originally conceived
in 1823 to keep the United States out of European affairs and new European intervention or colonization out of the Western
Hemisphere—to mean actively trying to rid the hemisphere of indigenous socialist or communist movements. Under this
twist in the doctrine, the Colossus of the North, for example, used assassination attempts (against Fidel Castro in Cuba), CIA
covert operations (Bay of Pigs invasion against Cuba and Contra operations against the Nicaraguan socialist government),
direct military interventions (in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and in the invasion of Grenada in 1983), coups and coup
attempts (against Salvador Allende’s government in Chile), and economic sanctions (against many left-leaning regimes in
Latin America).
....
Americans have very little introspection about their government’s overly interventionist foreign policy because the compliant
and complicit American media, both left and right, feed U.S. government propaganda about American actions into the public
sphere when the intervention occurs but conveniently absolve them when future crises arise because of the bad policies.
Without such introspection, U.S. interventionist foreign policies will continue to cause blowback that the American people
believe just arrives out thin air."

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/an-american-lack-of-introspection-on-failed-u-s-foreign-policy/