The Russia-Ukraine crisis continues unabated as the United States ignores
all of Russian President Vladmir Putin's security demands and spreads a
frenzy of fear by claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent.

In a new exclusive interview for Truthout on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine
crisis, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky outlines the
deadly dangers of U.S. intransigence over Ukrainian membership in the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even when key Western allies
have already vetoed earlier U.S. efforts in that direction. He also seeks
to shed some light on the reasons why Republicans today seem to be divided
on Russia.

https://menafn.com/1103644305/Noam-Chomsky-US-Approach-to-Ukraine-and-Russia-HasLeft-the-Domain-of-Rational-Discourse&source=30

Chomsky — whose intellectual contributions have been compared to those of
Galileo, Newton and Descartes — has had tremendous influence on a variety
of areas of scholarly and scientific inquiry, including linguistics, logic
and mathematics, computer science, psychology, media studies, philosophy,
politics and international affairs. He is the author of some 150 books and
recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards including the Sydney
Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize),
as well as dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world's most
renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently Laureate Professor at
the University of Arizona.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

C.J. Polychroniou : Tensions continue to escalate between Russia and
Ukraine, and there is little room for optimism since the U.S. offer for
de-escalation fails to meet any of Russia's security demands. As such,
wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the Russia-Ukraine border crisis
stems in reality from the U.S.'s intransigent position over Ukrainian
membership in NATO? In the same context, is it hard to imagine what might
have been Washington's response to the hypothetical event that Mexico
wanted to join a Moscow-driven military alliance?

Noam Chomsky : We hardly need to linger on the latter question. No country
would dare to make such a move in what former President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's Secretary of War Henry Stimson called“Our little region over
here,” when he was condemning all spheres of influence (except for our own
— which in reality, is hardly limited to the Western hemisphere)..
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is no less adamant today in condemning
Russia's claim to a“sphere of influence,” a concept we firmly reject (with
the same reservation).

There was of course one famous case when a country in our little region
came close to a military alliance with Russia, the 1962 missile crisis.
The circumstances, however, were quite unlike Ukraine. President John F.
Kennedy was escalating his terrorist war against Cuba to a threat of
invasion; Ukraine, in sharp contrast, faces threats as a result of its
potentially joining a hostile military alliance. Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev's reckless decision to provide Cuba with missiles was also an
effort to slightly rectify the enormous U.S. preponderance of military
force after JFK had responded to Khrushchev's offer of mutual reduction of
offensive weapons with the largest military buildup in peacetime history,
though the U.S. was already far ahead. We know what that led to.

The tensions over Ukraine are extremely severe, with Russia's
concentration of military forces at Ukraine's borders. The Russian
position has been quite explicit for some time. It was stated clearly by
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at his press conference at the United
Nations:“The main issue is our clear position on the inadmissibility of
further expansion of NATO to the East and the deployment of strike weapons
that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation.” Much the
same was reiterated shortly after by Putin, as he had often said before.

Historian Richard Sakwa … observed that“NATO's existence became justified
by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement” — a plausible
judgment.

There is a simple way to deal with deployment of weapons: Don't deploy
them. There is no justification for doing so. The U.S. may claim that they
are defensive, but Russia surely doesn't see it that way, and with reason.

The question of further expansion is more complex. The issue goes back
over 30 years, to when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was
collapsing. There were extensive negotiations among Russia, the U.S. and
Germany. (The core issue was German unification.) Two visions were
presented. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a Eurasian security
system from Lisbon to Vladivostok with no military blocs. The U.S.
rejected it: NATO stays, Russia's Warsaw Pact disappears.

For obvious reasons, German reunification within a hostile military
alliance is no small matter for Russia. Nevertheless, Gorbachev agreed to
it, with a quid pro quo: No expansion to the East. President George H.W.
Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed. In their words to
Gorbachev:“Not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries
as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States
keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of
NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction..”

“East” meant East Germany. No one had a thought about anything beyond, at
least in public. That's agreed on all sides. German leaders were even more
explicit about it. They were overjoyed just to have Russian agreement to
unification, and the last thing they wanted was new problems.

There is extensive scholarship on the matter — Mary Sarotte, Joshua
Shifrinson, and others, debating exactly who said what, what they meant,
what's its status, and so on. It is interesting and illuminating work, but
what it comes down to, when the dust settles, is what I quoted from the
declassified record.

President H.W. Bush pretty much lived up to these commitments. So did
President Bill Clinton at first, until 1999, the 50th anniversary of NATO;
with an eye on the Polish vote in the upcoming election, some have
speculated. He admitted Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO.
President George W. Bush — the lovable goofy grandpa who was celebrated in
the press on the 20th anniversary of his invasion of Afghanistan — let
down all the bars. He brought in the Baltic states and others. In 2008, he
invited Ukraine to join NATO, poking the bear in the eye. Ukraine is
Russia's geostrategic heartland, apart from intimate historic relations
and a large Russia-oriented population. Germany and France vetoed Bush's
reckless invitation, but it's still on the table. No Russian leader would
accept that, surely not Gorbachev, as he made clear.

As in the case of deployment of offensive weapons on the Russian border,
there is a straightforward answer. Ukraine can have the same status as
Austria and two Nordic countries throughout the whole Cold War: neutral,
but tightly linked to the West and quite secure, part of the European
Union to the extent they chose to be.

The U.S. adamantly rejects this outcome, loftily proclaiming its
passionate dedication to the sovereignty of nations, which cannot be
infringed: Ukraine's right to join NATO must be honored. This principled
stand may be lauded in the U.S., but it surely is eliciting loud guffaws
in much of the world, including the Kremlin. The world is hardly unaware
of our inspiring dedication to sovereignty, notably in the three cases
that particularly enraged Russia: Iraq, Libya and Kosovo-Serbia.

Iraq need not be discussed: U.S. aggression enraged almost everyone. The
NATO assaults on Libya and Serbia, both a slap in Russia's face during its
sharp decline in the '90s, is clothed in righteous humanitarian terms in
U.S. propaganda. It all quickly dissolves under scrutiny, as amply
documented elsewhere. And the richer record of U.S. reverence for the
sovereignty of nations needs no review.

It is sometimes claimed that NATO membership increases security for Poland
and others. A much stronger case can be made that NATO membership
threatens their security by heightening tensions. Historian Richard Sakwa,
a specialist on East Europe, observed that“NATO's existence became
justified by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement” — a
plausible judgment.

The U.S. is vigorously fanning the flames while Ukraine is asking it to
tone down the rhetoric.

There is much more to say about Ukraine and how to deal with the very
dangerous and mounting crisis there, but perhaps this is enough to suggest
that there is no need to inflame the situation and to move on to what
might well turn out to be a catastrophic war.

There is, in fact, a surreal quality to the U.S. rejection of
Austrian-style neutrality for Ukraine. U.S. policy makers know perfectly
well that admission of Ukraine to NATO is not an option for the
foreseeable future. We can, of course, put aside the ridiculous posturing
about the sanctity of sovereignty. So, for the sake of a principle in
which they do not believe for a moment, and in pursuit of an objective
that they know is out of reach, the U.S. is risking what may turn into a
shocking catastrophe. On the surface, it seems incomprehensible, but there
are plausible imperial calculations.

We might ask why Putin has taken such a belligerent stance on the ground..
There is a cottage industry seeking to solve this mystery: Is he a madman?
Is he planning to force Europe to become a Russian satellite? What is he
up to?

One way to find out is to listen to what he says: For years, Putin has
tried to induce the U.S. to pay some attention to the requests that he and
Foreign Minister Lavrov repeated, in vain. One possibility is that the
show of force is a way to achieve this objective. That has been suggested
by well-informed analysts. If so, it seems to have succeeded, at least in
a limited way.

Germany and France have already vetoed earlier U.S. efforts to offer
membership to Ukraine. So why is the U.S. so keen on NATO expansion
eastward to the point of treating a Russian invasion of Ukraine as
imminent, even when Ukrainian leaders themselves don't seem to think so?
And since when did Ukraine come to represent a beacon of democracy?

It is indeed curious to watch what is unfolding. The U.S. is vigorously
fanning the flames while Ukraine is asking it to tone down the rhetoric.
While there is much turmoil about why the demon Putin is acting as he is,
U.S. motives are rarely subject to scrutiny. The reason is familiar: By
definition, U.S. motives are noble, even if its efforts to implement them
are perhaps misguided.

Nevertheless, the question might merit some thought, at least by“the wild
men in the wings,” to borrow former National Security Advisor McGeorge
Bundy's phrase, referring to those incorrigible figures who dare to
subject Washington to the standards applied elsewhere.

A possible answer is suggested by a famous slogan about the purpose of
NATO: to keep Russia out, to keep Germany down and to keep the U.S. in.
Russia is out, far out. Germany is down. What remains is the question
whether the U.S. will be in Europe — more accurately, should be in charge.
Not all have quietly accepted this principle of world affairs, among them:
Charles de Gaulle, who advanced his concept of Europe from the Atlantic to
the Ural's; former German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik; and French
President Emmanuel Macron, with his current diplomatic initiatives that
are causing much displeasure in Washington.

If the Ukraine crisis is resolved peacefully, it will be a European
affair, breaking from the post-World War II“Atlanticist” conception that
places the U.S. firmly in the driver's seat. It might even be a precedent
for further moves toward European independence, maybe even moving toward
Gorbachev's vision. With China's Belt-and-Road initiative encroaching from
the East, much larger issues of global order arise.

As virtually always in the past when it comes to foreign affairs, we see a
bipartisan frenzy over Ukraine. However, while Republicans in Congress are
urging President Joe Biden to adopt a more aggressive stance toward
Russia, the proto-fascist base is questioning the party line. Why, and
what does the split among Republicans over Ukraine tell us about what is
happening to the Republicans?

One cannot easily speak of today's Republican Party as if it were a
genuine political party participating in a functioning democracy. More apt
is the description of the organization as“a radical insurgency —
ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of
the legitimacy of its political opposition.” This characterization by
political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the American
Enterprise is from a decade ago, pre-Donald Trump. By now it's far out of
date. In the acronym“GOP,” what remains is“O.”

I don't know whether the popular base that Trump has whipped up into a
worshipful cult is questioning the aggressive stance of Republican
leaders, or if they even care. Evidence is skimpy. Leading right-wing
figures closely associated with the GOP are moving well to the right of
European opinion, and of the stance of those who hope to retain some
semblance of democracy in the U.S. They are going even beyond Trump in
their enthusiastic support for Hungarian President Viktor
Orban's“illiberal democracy,” extolling it for saving Western
civilization, no less.

This effusive welcome for Orban's dismantling of democracy might bring to
mind the praise for Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini for
having“saved European civilization [so that] the merit that Fascism has
thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history”; the thoughts of
the revered founder of the neoliberal movement that has reigned for the
past 40 years, Ludwig von Mises, in his 1927 classic Liberalism.

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson has been the most outspoken of the
enthusiasts. Many Republican senators either go along with him or claim
ignorance of what Orban is doing, a remarkable confession of illiteracy at
the peak of global power. The highly regarded senior Sen. Charles Grassley
reports that he knows about Hungary only from Carlson's TV expositions,
and approves. Such performances tell us a good deal about the radical
insurgency. On Ukraine, breaking with the GOP leadership, Carlson asks why
we should take any position on a quarrel between“foreign countries that
don't care anything about the United States.”

Whatever one's views on international affairs, it's clear that we've left
the domain of rational discourse far behind, and are moving into territory
with an unattractive history, to put it mildly.

(C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author,
and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and
research centers in Europe and the United States)

### - smile, can always rely on good old chomsky to provide an 'objective'
view of us silly humans scrabbling in the dirt, pretending to be
intellectuals but never quite making it due to a whole in-built set of
stinky prior agendas that poisons everything...

iow: the human race is full of shit! so much so that we're actually
unlikely to survive our own stupid machinations!

greed, dishonesty & fear still ruling the species at every turn and
intersection, and screw the traffic lights!

we're clearly unable to get-out of our OWN way???

it's a crisis now alright, today, in ukraine... one that's gonna KEEP
occurring and REPEATING + getting worse each time, if not in europe then
elsewhere, on & on until the human race either radically changes it ways
and grows the fuck up (and learns to live together) or destroys itself in
some crazy outpouring of self-hatred & loathing...

imho & observation though we're prolly just too greedy & DUMB to survive?

the winning/losing game is just all too important to us!?

unfortunately it's moronic haha! the equivalent of being addicted to
buying scratch-cards or playing the lotto: ya KNOW ya can't ever win it
for real but still do it anyway LOL !

when it comes to the 'current' ukraine crisis though: we 'should' stop now
and start talking, come to some NEW arrangement... and THIS time WITHOUT
the forked-tongue and then maybe we'll get somewhere! coz just can't see
russia taking ALL these direct threats to their security lying down??

not a chance, they're a nuclear super-power in their own right ffs,
there's gonna be trouble otherwise!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVzM6cS1iME

(was lucky enough to actually be sitting in this audience at earls court
for this heh, was an incredible concert)