A reminder that NATO is currently not bombing European civilians

Luckily most Europeans do not need such a reminder. Nor do political leaders of Western countries, who have shown surprising unity in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, despite long-standing efforts of the Russian president to dismantle this unity by means of cyber warfare. Nonetheless, there is a palpable minority argument present in some Western-European countries that the blame for Putin’s invasion really lies with the United States or NATO, whose eastward expansion is said to threaten Russia’s security. Although it’s a minority opinion, it manifests itself in various ways and ideological permutations, but what they all have in common is that none of these arguments have much validity under the circumstances.

NATO’s eastward expansion is not happening because Americans want to occupy the world’s biggest nuclear power, which Putin has convinced a good portion of his population into believing, although it is true that they would like to preventively contain the potential threat presented by Putin’s military. As it appears with good reason; I was just as surprised to find out that Americans were right about something. It’s also true that the US is primarily pursuing interests in the region, mostly economic, and only secondarily worries about defending democratic values. Nevertheless, this expansion is happening above all else because Eastern-European nations due to historical reasons perceive Russia – and especially Russia under Putin – as their primary security threat, and because they understand that acceptance (not violent annexation) into the Western sphere of influence enables them to have an incomparably better life, a higher living standard, and a better future for their children than they could ever hope to get by remaining under Putin’s sphere of influence. By waging war on Ukraine, Putin has essentially proved his utter lack of a competitive vision. The past, the present, and the future thus all signal to the countries in the post-Soviet space to get out of that space as soon as possible.

As far as various imperialisms go, I would – were I Ukrainian – also opt for the one that demands wide support of the people for joining over the one that shows up in your country with tanks and drops cluster bombs on said people (which, by the way, constitutes a war crime). Hell, even if I was Russian, I would instantly trade in Vladimir Putin for an extra Starbucks on the streets of Moscow. A pumpkin spiced latte after all offers a better living standard than Putin, without threatening Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. And if I had concerns about the erosion of national culture due to Western influences, I could always pour a shot of vodka in my American coffee. Although given the lines forming in front of McDonald’s before the golden arches closed their doors in Russia might tell us something about the preferences of the Russian people that don’t show up on Putin’s opinion polls. However, the Russian citizen has no democratic levers by which to influence the political system in his or her country, as evidenced by the crackdown on anti-war protests, not to mention the media blackout, which forbids calling war – war. (Compare that to protests against and reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example.) The biggest, if not only, barrier between a Russian citizen and a relatively free life is simply not NATO – but Vladimir Putin. And the same now goes for the Ukrainian citizen.

It is worth asking if NATO and the West truly present a threat to the Russian people and Russia’s sovereignty, as the supposedly patriotic Putin assures his citizens, or do they in fact present a threat to Putin’s Russia and his own mafia-state apparatus.

But if Putin feels threatened by NATO, he has at his disposal a morally acceptable defence strategy, which is to offer Eastern-European countries better living conditions, a higher living standard, and greater security under his sphere of influence than they can hope to receive from the “evil” Western empire. In this case the leader of a global superpower can have as big of a buffer zone as he wants between himself and his imaginary enemies. Yet does anyone have any illusions that Putin can make such an offer? If he could, this war would not be happening. But an invasion on a sovereign, independent country is simply not a morally acceptable strategy, as was true of the Iraq invasion, if you still need to satisfy the “what about” objection. And by the way, Putin claims that Ukrainians and Russians are essentially “the same nation”. Following this theory, he is therefore currently protecting Russians from an external enemy by … killing Russians? Quite an unusual patriotism.

Despite this, some people are either nodding along with Putin, even though all his recent public appearances have been chock-full of strategic deception and historical revisionism, or they’re saying that due to NATO’s imperialist appetites the poor autocrat simply had no other choice but to kill women and children in a neighbouring country. This effectively amounts to saying that the Ukrainian citizen who wants democratic participation in his own country, security from a historically aggressive Russia, and hope that his or her children will live a better life, does not have that same right and privilege afforded us when we made a democratic choice about it in 2003. As if Ukraine’s geographic position does not even afford them the right to national security, while Putin’s security concerns are supposedly justified and understandable. Whatever NATO might mean elsewhere, to Ukraine it primarily means security from the leviathan in the east, who in the past has not proved itself to be a benevolent brotherly nation, but all too often as a genocidal imperialist (let us remember the Holodomor). It is interesting how lightly some people living under the safe canopy of NATO airplanes would condemn 44 million people to perpetual poverty and basically sacrifice them at the altar of a “global security balance”.

(Briefly about this balance: for a long time, this balance was smack in the middle of Berlin and southward across Europe. Nowadays in countries east of this divide one will be hard pressed to hear many theories about NATO’s responsibility for Putin’s actions. Then the balance was somewhere on Poland’s eastern border and the global order didn’t collapse. With the accession of the Baltic states, the balance was all the way on the Russian border, and nobody attacked Russia, despite its weak defence position. I mean to say that the “global security balance” seems quite flexible.)

Then there is the seemingly moderate and real-politick argument that Ukraine could at least partially give in to Russia’s demands and commit to neutrality, then slowly begin inching toward Europe, which argument also legitimises Putin’s invasion. Two examples of good practice in this regard are, of course, Sweden and Finland, both neutral and both highly developed EU countries. But it is worth mentioning that unlike the two Nordic countries, Ukraine suffers from the geostrategic bad luck of having recently discovered deposits of natural gas on its territory, which could make it a competitor to Russia in the European energy market, disrupting Russia’s profitable status as the continent’s only petro-state. Even if Ukraine commits to military neutrality, there are economic incentives that compel Putin to keep Ukraine as poor as possible and unable to develop the capacity for extracting its natural resources (which he has been doing for the past eight years by annexing Crimea and supporting separatists in Donbass), while also keeping a tight grip on the Ukrainian political system to ensure no Western corporation offers its services either (which he was doing before Maidan). Capitulation and commitment to neutrality therefore offer no real chance of Westernization (e.g., EU accession), nor improvement in living standards.

Lastly, among West-European leftists one can sometimes hear the argument of the “Putin is an autocrat, but” variety. This argument condemns Putin’s invasion, supports anti-war protests, but the condemnation rings all too much like a disclaimer which is followed by the same old story of American imperialism that accompanied all American military interventions so far, even though – as said – NATO is currently not dropping bombs on European civilians. The facts they list are not necessarily wrong, but I fail to comprehend the moral priorities implicit in stating them now. Being consistent and principled does not mean continuing to condemn NATO while Putin bombs maternity hospitals in Ukraine. Being consistent means condemning Putin the exact same way we previously condemned American wars and supporting measures that will put a stop to his designs, even if under current circumstances this means supporting NATO or our own European leaders, who otherwise make us all feel so disappointed. After all, we didn’t respond to American involvement in the Yemeni war by saying it’s an unacceptable humanitarian disaster, but then again Putin also invaded Georgia a couple years prior. No, we consistently condemned the bombing of civilian targets, without resorting to what-aboutism. At least I hope we did. All I’m suggesting is that we focus on America when America does imperialist things; and expanding their alliance to countries that desperately want such an expansion simply does not qualify.

All this of course doesn’t mean that Western countries don’t have a lot of looking in the mirror to do. Our own democratic deficit, oligarchic tendencies, neo-colonialism, and military devastation in the Middle East and elsewhere have given Putin the strategic position from which he was able to execute his years-long plan. We are unfortunately complicit in his mafia-state apparatus; all the luxury real estate in Sankt Londonburg is a testament to that. But I cannot get past the observation that some people who were up to this point blissfully undisturbed by American imperialism – what’s more, they daily enjoyed its privileges – are now pointing their relativist finger at NATO, or even something completely unrelated, like the situation in Palestine. Who knows, they might also soon remember the preposterous fact that Julian Assange is still locked up in a London jail for saying something that was true. But every self-reflection of the sort also means yet another scene on TV in which soldiers are clearing bodies of a family with two small children from a Ukrainian street, because they didn’t manage to escape Putin’s bombs.

Right now, Ukrainians don’t have time for our mirror-gazing.