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烏克蘭戰爭是被挑起的——為什麽這對實現和平很重要
https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/wgtgma5kj69pbpndjr4wf6aayhrszm
通過認識到北約東擴問題是這場戰爭的核心，我們理解了為什麽美國的武器無法結束這場戰爭。 隻有外交努力才能做到這一點。
作者：傑弗裏·D. 薩克斯 2023 年 5 月 23 日 共同的夢想
喬治·奧威爾在 1984 年寫道：“誰控製了過去，誰就控製了未來：誰控製了現在，就控製了過去。” 各國政府不遺餘力地扭曲公眾對過去的看法。 關於烏克蘭戰爭，拜登政府多次錯誤地聲稱，烏克蘭戰爭始於俄羅斯2022年2月24日無端攻擊烏克蘭。事實上，這場戰爭是美國挑起的，其方式正如美國主要外交官所預料的那樣。 戰爭爆發前幾十年，這意味著戰爭本來可以避免，現在應該通過談判停止。
認識到戰爭是被挑起的，有助於我們了解如何製止戰爭。 這並不能證明俄羅斯的入侵是正當的。 對俄羅斯來說，更好的做法可能是加強與歐洲和非西方世界的外交，以解釋和反對美國的軍國主義和單邊主義。 事實上，美國無情地推動北約擴張遭到了全世界的廣泛反對，因此俄羅斯的外交而不是戰爭可能會更有效。
拜登團隊不斷使用“無端”一詞，最近一次是在拜登的戰爭一周年紀念演講中，在最近的北約聲明中，以及在最近的七國集團聲明中。 對拜登友好的主流媒體隻是鸚鵡學舌地模仿白宮。 《紐約時報》是罪魁禍首，在五篇社論、《紐約時報》作家的 14 篇評論專欄和 7 篇客座專欄中，至少 26 次將這次入侵描述為“無端”！
事實上，美國的挑釁主要有兩個。 一是美國有意將北約擴大到烏克蘭和格魯吉亞，以期在黑海地區由北約國家（烏克蘭、羅馬尼亞、保加利亞、土耳其、格魯吉亞，逆時針順序）包圍俄羅斯。 第二個是美國在 2014 年 2 月暴力推翻烏克蘭親俄總統維克多·亞努科維奇（Viktor Yanukovych），從而在烏克蘭建立了一個仇俄政權。烏克蘭的槍戰是在 9 年前亞努科維奇被推翻時開始的，而不是在 2022 年 2 月。 美國政府、北約和七國集團領導人會讓我們相信。
烏克蘭和平的關鍵是在烏克蘭中立和北約不擴大的基礎上進行談判。
拜登和他的外交政策團隊拒絕討論戰爭的這些根源。 承認他們會在三個方麵削弱政府。 首先，它將暴露這樣一個事實：戰爭本可以避免或提前停止，從而使烏克蘭免受目前的破壞，並使美國迄今為止免受超過 1000 億美元的支出。 其次，這將暴露拜登總統在戰爭中作為推翻亞努科維奇的參與者以及在此之前作為軍工聯合體的堅定支持者和北約東擴的早期倡導者的個人角色。 第三，這將把拜登推到談判桌前，破壞政府繼續推動北約擴張的努力。
檔案無可辯駁地表明，美國和德國政府多次向蘇聯總統戈爾巴喬夫承諾，在蘇聯解散華約軍事聯盟時，北約不會“東移一寸”。 盡管如此，美國的北約擴張計劃早在 20 世紀 90 年代初就開始了，遠早於弗拉基米爾·普京 (Vladimir Putin) 擔任俄羅斯總統之前。 1997年，國家安全專家茲比格涅夫·布熱津斯基非常精確地闡明了北約擴張時間表。
美國外交官和烏克蘭領導人都清楚北約東擴可能導致戰爭。 美國偉大的學者政治家喬治·凱南稱北約東擴是一個“致命的錯誤”，他在《紐約時報》上寫道，“這樣的決定可能會激起俄羅斯輿論中的民族主義、反西方和軍國主義傾向； 對俄羅斯民主的發展產生不利影響； 使東西方關係恢複冷戰氣氛，並將俄羅斯外交政策推向我們顯然不喜歡的方向。”
比爾·克林頓總統的國防部長威廉·佩裏考慮辭職，以抗議北約東擴。 在回憶 20 世紀 90 年代中期的這一關鍵時刻時，佩裏在 2016 年說道：“我們的第一個行動真正讓我們走向了一個糟糕的方向，那就是北約開始擴張，引入了東歐國家，其中一些國家與俄羅斯接壤。 。 當時，我們正在與俄羅斯密切合作，他們開始習慣北約可以成為朋友而不是敵人的想法……但他們對北約就在他們的邊境上感到非常不舒服，他們做了一個 強烈呼籲我們不要繼續這樣做。”
2008年，時任美國大使
或向俄羅斯，現在中央情報局局長威廉伯恩斯向華盛頓發出了一封電報，詳細警告北約東擴的嚴重風險：“烏克蘭和格魯吉亞的北約願望不僅觸動了俄羅斯的神經，還引起了人們對其後果的嚴重擔憂。 該地區的穩定。 俄羅斯不僅意識到這種包圍和削弱俄羅斯在該地區影響力的行為，而且還擔心出現不可預測和不受控製的後果，嚴重影響俄羅斯的安全利益。 專家告訴我們，俄羅斯尤其擔心烏克蘭在加入北約問題上的強烈分歧，其中許多俄羅斯族社區反對加入北約，這可能會導致重大分裂，導致暴力，最壞的情況是內戰。 在這種情況下，俄羅斯將不得不決定是否進行幹預； 俄羅斯不想麵對這個決定。”
烏克蘭領導人清楚地知道，敦促北約擴大對烏克蘭的影響將意味著戰爭。 澤倫斯基前顧問奧列克西·阿雷斯托維奇在 2019 年的一次采訪中宣稱，“我們加入北約的代價是與俄羅斯進行一場大戰。”
2010年至2013年期間，亞努科維奇主張中立，這與烏克蘭輿論一致。 美國秘密地致力於推翻亞努科維奇，這一點在美國助理國務卿維多利亞·紐蘭和美國大使傑弗裏·皮亞特在暴力推翻亞努科維奇前幾周策劃後亞努科維奇政府的錄音中生動地體現出來。 紐蘭在電話中明確表示，她正在與時任副總統拜登和他的國家安全顧問傑克·沙利文密切協調，這同一個拜登-紐蘭-沙利文團隊現在處於美國對烏克蘭政策的核心。
亞努科維奇被推翻後，頓巴斯爆發戰爭，俄羅斯聲稱擁有克裏米亞主權。 烏克蘭新政府呼籲加入北約，美國武裝並幫助重組烏克蘭軍隊，使其能夠與北約互操作。 2021年，北約和拜登政府再次對烏克蘭在北約的未來做出了強烈承諾。
在俄羅斯入侵之前，北約東擴成為焦點。 普京的美俄條約草案（2021 年 12 月 17 日）呼籲停止北約東擴。 俄羅斯領導人在 2022 年 2 月 21 日舉行的俄羅斯國家安全委員會會議上將北約東擴視為戰爭原因。普京在當天的全國講話中宣布北約東擴是入侵的核心原因。
曆史學家傑弗裏·羅伯茨最近寫道：“俄羅斯與西方達成一項阻止北約擴張並中立烏克蘭的協議，以換取對烏克蘭獨立和主權的堅實保障，是否可以阻止戰爭？ 很有可能。” 2022年3月，俄羅斯和烏克蘭報告稱，在烏克蘭保持中立的基礎上，通過談判迅速結束戰爭取得了進展。 擔任調解人的以色列前總理納夫塔利·貝內特表示，在美國、英國和法國阻止之前，協議已接近達成。
盡管拜登政府宣稱俄羅斯的入侵是無端的，但俄羅斯在2021年尋求外交選擇以避免戰爭，而拜登則拒絕外交，堅稱俄羅斯在北約東擴問題上沒有任何發言權。 俄羅斯在2022年3月推動外交，而拜登團隊則再次阻止通過外交手段結束戰爭。
通過認識到北約東擴問題是這場戰爭的核心，我們理解了為什麽美國的武器無法結束這場戰爭。 俄羅斯將在必要時升級行動，以阻止北約擴大到烏克蘭。 烏克蘭和平的關鍵是在烏克蘭中立和北約不擴大的基礎上進行談判。 拜登政府堅持北約東擴，使烏克蘭成為美國軍事願望的錯誤和無法實現的受害者。 現在是停止挑釁、通過談判恢複烏克蘭和平的時候了。
更正：本文的早期版本錯誤地表述了 William Burns 2008 年關於北約擴張的電報警告的日期。 該錯誤已得到修複。
The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/wgtgma5kj69pbpndjr4wf6aayhrszm
By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that.
By JeffreyD. Sachs May 23, 2023 Common Dreams
George Orwell wrote in 1984 that "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Governments work relentlessly to distort public perceptions of the past. Regarding the Ukraine War, the Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.
Recognizing that the war was provoked helps us to understand how to stop it. It doesn’t justify Russia’s invasion. A far better approach for Russia might have been to step up diplomacy with Europe and with the non-Western world to explain and oppose U.S. militarism and unilateralism. In fact, the relentless U.S. push to expand NATO is widely opposed throughout the world, so Russian diplomacy rather than war would likely have been effective.
The Biden team uses the word “unprovoked” incessantly, most recently in Biden’s major speech on the first-year anniversary of the war, in a recent NATO statement, and in the most recent G7 statement. Mainstream media friendly to Biden simply parrot the White House. TheNew York Times is the lead culprit, describing the invasion as “unprovoked” no fewer than 26 times, in five editorials, 14 opinion columns by NYT writers, and seven guest op-eds!
There were in fact two main U.S. provocations. The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order). The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.
The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.
Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war. To recognize them would undermine the administration in three ways. First, it would expose the fact that the war could have been avoided, or stopped early, sparing Ukraine its current devastation and the U.S. more than $100 billion in outlays to date. Second, it would expose President Biden’s personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and before that as a staunch backer of the military-industrial complex and very early advocate of NATO enlargement. Third, it would push Biden to the negotiating table, undermining the administration’s continued push for NATO expansion.
The archives show irrefutably that the U.S. and German governments repeatedly promised to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” when the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance. Nonetheless, U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision.
U.S. diplomats and Ukraine’s own leaders knew well that NATO enlargement could lead to war. The great US scholar-statesman George Kennan called NATO enlargement a “fateful error,” writing in the New York Times that, “Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Perry considered resigning in protest against NATO enlargement. In reminiscing about this crucial moment in the mid-1990s, Perry said the following in 2016: “Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time, we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that NATO could be a friend rather than an enemy ... but they were very uncomfortable about having NATO right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”
In 2008, then U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and now CIA Director, William Burns, sent a cable to Washington warning at length of grave risks of NATO enlargement: “Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Ukraine’s leaders knew clearly that pressing for NATO enlargement to Ukraine would mean war. Former Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovych declared in a 2019 interview “that our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”
During 2010-2013, Yanukovych pushed neutrality, in line with Ukrainian public opinion. The U.S. worked covertly to overthrow Yanukovych, as captured vividly in the tape of then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt planning the post-Yanukovych government weeks before the violent overthrow of Yanukovych. Nuland makes clear on the call that she was coordinating closely with then Vice President Biden and his national security advisor Jake Sullivan, the same Biden-Nuland-Sullivan team now at the center of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.
After Yanukovych’s overthrow, the war broke out in the Donbas, while Russia claimed Crimea. The new Ukrainian government appealed for NATO membership, and the U.S. armed and helped restructure the Ukrainian army to make it interoperable with NATO. In 2021, NATO and the Biden Administration strongly recommitted to Ukraine’s future in NATO.
In the immediate lead-up to Russia’s invasion, NATO enlargement was center stage. Putin’s draft US-Russia Treaty (December 17, 2021) called for a halt to NATO enlargement. Russia’s leaders put NATO enlargement as the cause of war in Russia’s National Security Council meeting on February 21, 2022. In his address to the nation that day, Putin declared NATO enlargement to be a central reason for the invasion.
Historian Geoffrey Roberts recently wrote: “Could war have been prevented by a Russian-Western deal that halted NATO expansion and neutralised Ukraine in return for solid guarantees of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty? Quite possibly.” In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine reported progress towards a quick negotiated end to the war based on Ukraine’s neutrality. According to Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister of Israel, who was a mediator, an agreement was close to being reached before the U.S., U.K., and France blocked it.
While the Biden administration declares Russia’s invasion to be unprovoked, Russia pursued diplomatic options in 2021 to avoid war, while Biden rejected diplomacy, insisting that Russia had no say whatsoever on the question of NATO enlargement. And Russia pushed diplomacy in March 2022, while the Biden team again blocked a diplomatic end to the war.
By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Russia will escalate as necessary to prevent NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement. The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations. It’s time for the provocations to stop, and for negotiations to restore peace to Ukraine.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the date of William Burns' 2008 cable warning about NATO enlargment. That error has been fixed.
