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Russia vs. Ukraine: Is It Our Fight?
The long-simmering dispute between Russia and Ukraine appears ready to boil over into all-out war. Should that happen, will NATO become embroiled in the conflagration? How about America?
Charles Scaliger
In early November of 2021, a world already preoccupied by the coronavirus pandemic was jolted anew by the sudden announcement of a massive Russian military buildup along Ukraine’s eastern border. The long-simmering territorial dispute over the Donbas, a region in eastern Ukraine that is culturally and linguistically Russian, almost overnight became a potential theater for a major war between East and West.
American and European leaders lined up in support of Ukraine and its charismatic young president, Volodomir Zhelensky, even as Russia’s longtime strongman President Vladimir Putin drew a line in the sand. Ukraine, Putin insisted, was historically part of Russia, and would never be permitted to join NATO alongside fellow former Soviet republics Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
The West, in turn, accused Russia of threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty and vowed resolute action against Russia — including possible military involvement — should Putin opt to invade. President Biden himself hinted at drastic economic sanctions, including perhaps cutting off Russia from the Belgium-based SWIFT (Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), a system that allows international trade, money wiring, and currency convertibility. As a result of this conflict, in tandem with the growing crisis over Taiwan in the Far East, the world is facing the first real threat of a major war between nuclear-armed superpowers since the Cold War, and the first use of nuclear weapons since World War II.
It is evident that Putin and Russia are in deadly earnest. In mid-December, Russia submitted a list of guarantees that it wishes to receive from the West in order to stave off a war. Perhaps the most important is a guarantee for Ukraine not to join NATO, but the Russians also want NATO to refrain from carrying out activities in eastern European countries that are not NATO members. Putin has made clear that failure to guarantee a NATO-free Ukraine is a deal-breaker.
In the meantime, Russia is taking a hard line on what might come next, should the West prove intransigent. Dmitry Kiselyov, head of the Russian state-owned news organization Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) and Putin’s personal selection to head the propaganda agency, told the BBC that Russia was preparing to deploy more missiles, including its vaunted new hypersonic missiles. “If Ukraine ever joins NATO or if NATO develops military infrastructure there, we will hold a gun to America’s head. We have the military capability,” Kiselyov told BBC. “Russia has the best weapons in the world — hypersonic ones. They’d reach America as fast as US or British weapons could reach Moscow from Ukraine. It would be the Cuban missile crisis all over again, but with a shorter flight time for the missiles.” For added effect, Kiselyov suggested that America could be “turned into radioactive ash” if Russia’s conditions were not met.
The Russian media, meanwhile, have been actively priming the Russian public for a possible nuclear war, and the Russian government is apparently preparing to excavate massive pits that could serve as mass graves for the victims of radioactive fallout. This latter program has been labeled by Russian chess grandmaster and political dissident Garry Kasparov as one of the “signposts on the way to the apocalypse.”
And the Russians are not alone in their willingness to resort to the nuclear option; some American politicians, such as Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee, threatened to “rain destruction on the Russian military” should Putin launch an invasion of Ukraine, a campaign that might include nuclear strikes, since “we don’t rule out first-use nuclear action.” The Biden administration and American allies in Europe have struck only a slightly milder tone, threatening Russia with cutting off the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany, or perhaps even cutting Russia off from SWIFT.
Long-simmering Dispute
To those of us who lived through the Cold War, this is heady and horrifying stuff, surpassing in rhetoric and brinksmanship any event of that era aside from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lost in all the threats and counter-threats, however, is any level-headed discussion of the grievances of Russia and Ukraine and their long-simmering dispute over the Donbas.
The conflict over the Donbas region is neither new nor particularly clear-cut. The Donbas, long part of Russia, first rose to international significance in the 19th century as a result of its enormous coal resources. In fact, the name itself is a contracted form of “Donets Basin,” short for Donets Coal Basin. The largest city, Donetsk, was founded by a British industrialist who made a fortune there mining coal. During the Russian and Ukrainian communist revolutions, the Ukrainians ended up seizing the Donbas region, with the result that it was incorporated into the Ukrainian portion of the Soviet Union, and remained a part of an independent Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. However, its overwhelmingly Russian ethnic makeup, large population, and industrial might have made the region a continued bone of contention, with local sentiment decidedly in favor of either independence from the corrupt, kleptocratic, and discriminatory Ukrainian government, or of outright annexation by “Mother Russia.”
Events came to a head in March 2014, when a separatist war erupted in the region against the backdrop of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, another Russian-majority Ukrainian territory, and the revolutionary overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Amid bitter fighting, well-armed separatists, with the support of the Russian military, seized control of most of the Donbas and proclaimed two sovereign “people’s republics,” Luhansk and Donetsk, which continue to this day. These two republics, recognized internationally only by another breakaway republic in the region, South Ossetia, now control most of the Donbas, including its largest cities, mineral assets, and millions of residents — a not-insignificant percentage of the entire Ukrainian population. By all accounts, the respective citizenries are overwhelmingly supportive of their new governments, and unwilling to be re-absorbed into Ukraine.
Adding to the complexity of matters in eastern Ukraine is the longer history of Ukraine and Russia. Both cultures regard the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, as their ancestral heartland, a view vindicated by a shared history and language that only diverged in the Middle Ages. Even today, the Russian and Ukrainian languages are so similar as to be mutually comprehensible, and both peoples are predominantly Orthodox Christian. Moreover, large swaths of Ukraine, as recognized internationally, are almost entirely ethnic Russian — in addition to the Donbas, Crimea and the major Black Sea city of Odessa are in essence Russian settlements.
Internationally, Russia has been increasingly alarmed at the advance of NATO into its “near abroad,” which has seen the accession of many former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact nations. Despite early assurances by the West to Russian officials after the breakup of the Soviet Union that NATO would make no inroads into the Russian sphere of influence, the ensuing decades have seen the three Baltic republics — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — as well as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and many of the successor countries of the former Yugoslavia all formally join NATO. Moreover, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan are all beneficiaries of Individual Partnership Action Plans, or formal cooperative agreements with NATO that might one day be upgraded to Membership Action Plans. With the exception of China, Finland, and the Russian Far East, Russia now finds herself virtually encircled by NATO members or potential members. And nearly all of these new European NATO members have joined the European Union, as well.
Nationalism vs. Globalism
One need not be particularly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin or his policies to appreciate why Russia might be deeply suspicious of Western motives. By all accounts, a post-Cold War policy of strategic encirclement has left Russia increasingly isolated, except for staunch ally Belarus. NATO, founded for the stated purpose of countering Soviet expansionism, has, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Russian communist menace, expanded instead of disbanding, and redefined its mission to include the decades-long war in Afghanistan, among other things.
It is no accident that NATO and the European Union have expanded largely in tandem. Just as NATO is the most significant international military alliance ever created, so too is the European Union the most “successful” attempt at consensual economic and political union in history. The European Union, originally created out of the deceptively named European Common Market, has become a very transparent effort to set up a full-blown regional government. Such regional government blocs are also being set up in Africa, South America, and North America (this last, in the guise of the recently created USMCA), always in the beginning disguised as “free trade zones.” The ultimate motivation behind such regional arrangements is to drastically reduce the number of sovereign governments on the face of the Earth and provide for a simpler and more orderly integration of such regional blocs into a single global authority — the real ultimate goal of internationalist foreign policymakers. As former U.S. National Security Advisor and unapologetic globalist Zbigniew Brzezinski opined in 1995, “We cannot leap into world government in one quick step.... The precondition for eventual globalization — genuine globalization — is progressive regionalization, because thereby we move toward larger, more stable, more cooperative units.”
At the same time, regional military alliances, and especially NATO, are perpetuated as a means of internationalizing military force, to prepare for the eventual consolidation of regional military alliances into a global military — another indispensable ingredient of a consolidated global government.
Of course, not every sovereign country may be willing to submit to such a process. Russia and China, their other deficiencies aside, remain extremely nationalistic and resistant to assimilation into existing international systems. Both countries are very reluctant to enter into any type of binding agreement or treaty with other countries or with any international authority, and typically flout the rules of any international organization that they do end up joining. And both countries are large enough and well-enough armed that even a Gulf War-style international coalition might not be able to compel them to accede to the demands of the “international community.”
Thus the ultimate objective of the so-called international community, i.e., the internationalists whose policies and priorities completely dominate the foreign-policy agenda in the West, including the United States, is the establishment of a single world government — by consent if possible, but by force if necessary. Most of their actions are guided by the imperative of creating political, military, and economic conditions favorable to the eventual establishment of such a “world order.” All of the major innovations in foreign policy since World War II — the establishment of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the IMF, and the World Bank; the creation of the European Union; and the formation of permanent international military alliances, especially NATO — have all had as their core purpose diluting the sovereignty of individual countries (especially powerful countries such as the United States) and building the architecture of an eventual world government, to be progressively strengthened as conditions allow.
With smaller nations, negating national sovereignty is not too difficult. Such countries are often willing to trade sovereignty for guarantees of military protection against stronger neighbors and for better access to foreign markets. Strong nations — especially nations armed with the ultimate power chips, nuclear weapons — pose a vexing challenge to “one-worlders,” however, as no less an eminence than Bertrand Russell, a prominent British intellectual and international socialist, pointed out at the dawn of the modern nuclear age. Writing for The Atlantic in 1951, Russell advocated stern measures for recalcitrant nuclear-armed regimes:
The establishment of a single government for the whole world might be realized in various ways: by the victory of the United States in the next world war, or by the victory of the U.S.S.R., or, theoretically, by agreement. Or — and I think this is the most hopeful of the issues that are in any degree probable — by an alliance of the nations that desire an international government, becoming, in the end, so strong that Russia would no longer dare to stand out. This might conceivably be achieved without another world war, but it would require courageous and imaginative statesmanship in a number of countries…. I think we should admit that a world government will have to be imposed by force….
Great wars can be brought to an end only by the concentration of armed force under a single authority. Such a concentration cannot be brought about by agreement, because of the opposition of Soviet Russia, but it must be brought about somehow.
The first step — and it is one which is now not very difficult — is to persuade the United States and the British Commonwealth of the absolute necessity for a military unification of the world. The governments of the English-speaking nations should then offer to all other nations the option of entering into a firm alliance, involving a pooling of military resources and mutual defense against aggression. In the case of hesitant nations, such as Italy, great inducements, economic and military, should be held out to produce their cooperation.
At a certain stage, when the alliance had acquired sufficient strength, any great power still refusing to join should be threatened with outlawry and, if recalcitrant, should be regarded as a public enemy. The resulting war … would probably leave the economic and political structure of the United States intact, and would enable the victorious alliance to establish a monopoly of armed force, and therefore to make peace secure. But perhaps, if the alliance were sufficiently powerful, war would not be necessary, and the reluctant powers would prefer to enter it as equals rather than, after a terrible war, submit to it as vanquished enemies. If this were to happen, the world might emerge from its present dangers without another great war. I do not see any hope of such a happy issue by any other method. But whether Russia would yield when threatened with war is a question as to which I do not venture an opinion.
Here, then, is the essential plan, laid out by one of the 20th century’s most influential intellectuals and opinion molders, whose internationalist credentials were impeccable: Set up and enlarge a military alliance, led by the United States and Great Britain, gradually involving more and more countries until, eventually, this military alliance will have the power to compel even mighty Russia to come to terms — either as a vanquished combatant or as a submissive former foe no longer willing to wish annihilation in the service of old-fashioned national sovereignty. Russell was willing to resort to all-out war to achieve Russia’s compliance, believing as he did that continued international “anarchy” was an unacceptable risk, and that the forcible imposition of world government was the only hope for humanity to avoid self-destruction. Russell also argued that it would be preferable that the eventual world government be a creation of Western nations such as the United States and the U.K., rather than of Soviet or Chinese communists, since the West had enjoyed a long tradition of limited government and the protection of human rights.
Given Russell’s candor, the true motives behind the maintenance and expansion of NATO, as well as the West’s endless preoccupation with Russia’s every border dispute, are plain to see: An independent, fiercely nationalist Russia is an unacceptable challenge to the world-government program, and one that must be quashed at any cost. Clearly incremental encirclement and military and economic coercion are the preferred instruments; but, if the views of Russell are to be taken as representative of at least some internationalists, all-out war, including nuclear war, is not off the table.
And such could be the outcome of the unpleasantness building in eastern Ukraine, despite what the Biden administration may believe. Economic penalties being discussed include the aforementioned cutting off of Russia from SWIFT should Russia invade Ukraine. This and other potentially crippling financial and trade sanctions, such as ending convertibility of the ruble to U.S. dollars, could effectively destroy an already-fragile Russian economy weakened by years of sanctions, forcing them to do business only with a handful of regimes, such as Iran and China, that might not be willing to cooperate with Western-led initiatives. Driven to desperation, the Russians might conclude that they have nothing further to lose by moving against the Baltic republics and eastern Europe — if only to secure by force more avenues for trade and commerce — and end up triggering an international war.
Such machinations, after all, were in part what put America and Imperial Japan on a collision course during World War II: Despite proclaiming neutrality, America imposed crippling trade sanctions on Japan, including oil and steel embargoes, eventually prompting the latter to strike out at American military forces in Pearl Harbor and the Philippines.
Road to World Government
Risking a third world war, complete with nuclear weapons, over a territorial dispute in Ukraine might seem to be the very definition of insanity. But the perverse logic of world government turns rational thought on its ear. After World War I, a conflict that globalist President Woodrow Wilson sold to a skeptical American public as a campaign to “make the world safe for democracy,” Wilson and his internationalist advisors, led by Edward M. House, lost no time drawing up plans for a proto-world government called the League of Nations. At the same time, the British and French prepared plans of their own. Although the League was successfully established as part of the Treaty of Versailles, the American Senate refused to ratify membership in the organization, a signal failure for American globalists.
However, they succeeded a generation later against the backdrop of a second, far more calamitous world war whose depredations finally persuaded the American public that, after all, the only possible salvation lay in a global organization: the United Nations. Designed to be a framework for an eventual world government, the UN was inaugurated in 1944, this time with the enthusiastic support of the United States Senate and an American public exhausted by war. It seemed that the long-anticipated “Parliament of Man” would soon be consummated.
Russia vs Ukraine UN NATO EU crisis war
Usual suspects: While NATO and the EU have been at the center of the Ukrainian crisis, the real center, as always, is the United Nations, our longtime world-government-in-waiting. Another world war, especially one that unleashed the destructive power of Russian and American nuclear weapons, would be an almost irresistible pretext for the transformation of the UN into a true world government, complete with a single world military and nuclear authority. (Photo credit: GarethLowndes/iStock/GettyImagesPlus)
But the drive for world government faltered after World War II. Although the hobgoblin of nuclear war with the Soviet Union was brandished to considerable effect, neither the American public nor the citizenries of other Western countries ever manifested much sustained interest in surrendering their national identities and independence in the service of world federalism or some other Utopian abstraction.
In the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration undertook a feasibility study of how to integrate the world’s military forces and eventually subordinate them to a single global authority, with particular emphasis on denying sovereign nations control over the world’s nuclear stockpile. Published in 1961 by the Department of State, Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World contemplated progressively empowering the United Nations by ceding control over national military forces, including all weapons of mass destruction and all additional military forces except token reserves for internal peacekeeping. In the first of three stages of national disarmament laid out in the document, states possessing nuclear arms would cease further manufacture of such weapons and agree to reduce existing stockpiles. An International Disarmament Organization would be established for oversight and verification of disarmament. Moreover, the nuclear powers would enter into a treaty banning the further testing of nukes and their proliferation to countries not in possession of nuclear-weapons technology. Significantly, most of the aims described in the first stage have been accomplished: The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and its successor, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1996, brought to fruition one of the major goals of the Freedom From War program, while the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 accomplished another.
In the second stage, the International Disarmament Organization would be strengthened, and would begin overseeing the actual surrender of weapons, including nuclear weapons, to the United Nations. A permanent UN military force would also be established. In the final stage, the UN Peace Force would become the world’s most powerful military force, while nations would retain only small amounts of weapons necessary to keep the peace internally; all other weapons and weapons stockpiles — including, presumably, all privately owned weapons — would be destroyed, leaving a monopoly of force in the hands of a single global authority.
Needless to say, although efforts to bring about such an outcome have been unceasing, stages two and three are nowhere near fruition. One of the reasons is the refusal of sovereign nations to surrender their military forces, especially coveted nuclear weapons, to any global authority.
What Next?
There is absolutely no prospect of this state of affairs changing anytime soon. Yet the globalist zeal for world government is undiminished. If past is prelude, the only thing that might change the prevailing winds would be another world war, and one so devastating that the nations of the earth might finally conclude that the only hope for the human race resides in a world government. If enough cities lay in irradiated ruins, if sufficient millions were sacrificed on the altar of a nuclear Moloch, perhaps then the survivors would plead for the world order that they rejected in peacetime. In addition to the horrors entailed by such a war itself, the horrifying possible political outcome of such a conflict — a true world government and an end to national sovereignty and the supremacy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence — cannot be overstated.
While the partisans of world government have always preferred a peaceful, incremental approach, there can be no doubt that a nuclear war between the West and Russia would furnish the ultimate pretext for fast-tracking world government — a pretext they would certainly not hesitate to exploit should such a war occur.
A nuclear World War III would be an unprecedented calamity not only for the lives of millions of people, the fabric of modern civilization, and the rest of life on Earth, but also for future generations who would likely face permanent bondage under a world government in which an independent America was only a distant memory. American leaders have no sound moral or strategic interest in the broils of eastern Europe, and it is deadly folly to risk nuclear war — and its abyssal aftermath — by meddling in quarrels whose moral contours are unclear and whose outcome ought to be none of our business.
The meddling needs to stop. Americans should insist, therefore, that their elected representatives in Congress get the United States out of NATO and the United Nations and adopt a noninterventionist foreign policy.
Charles Scaliger, a longtime contributor to The New American and former academic at an American university, now lives and works in East Asia.
