Chomsky: avoid nuclear war, priority

C.J. Polychroniou

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, March 28, 2022, p. eleven

NATO leaders announced last Wednesday that the alliance plans to strengthen its eastern front by deploying more troops to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – including thousands of US troops – and sending team to help Ukraine defend against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. While NATO does not directly provide weapons, many of its member states do.

In this interview, renowned academic Noam Chomsky shares his thoughts and insights on the options available to end the war in Ukraine, discusses the idea of just war and whether the conflict could lead to the collapse of Vladimir Putin’s regime.

-We have been at war for a month and the peace talks have stalled. In fact, Putin turns up the volume of violence while the West increases military aid to Ukraine. In a previous interview, you compared the Russian invasion to the Nazi invasion of Poland. So is Putin’s strategy straight out of the Hitler playbook? Does he intend to occupy the whole Ukraine? Is he trying to rebuild the Russian empire? Is that why the negotiations have stopped?

–There is very little credible information regarding the negotiations. Some of the leaked information seems mildly optimistic. There is good reason to suppose that if the United States agreed to engage seriously, with a constructive program, the chances of ending the horror might be increased.

What that constructive program would be, at least in general terms, is no secret. The primary element is a neutrality agreement on the part of Ukraine: not to join a hostile military alliance, not to harbor weapons aimed at Russia (even those that bear the misleading name of defensive), do not carry out military maneuvers with hostile military forces.

That is nothing new in world affairs, even when nothing formal exists. Everyone understands that Mexico cannot join a Chinese-led military alliance, station Chinese weapons aimed at the United States, or carry out military maneuvers with the People’s Liberation Army.

In short, a constructive program would be more or less the opposite of the Joint Declaration on the United States-Ukraine Strategic Partnership signed by the White House on September 1, 2021. That document, which received little attention, arbitrarily stated that the door was open for Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As well capped off a Strategic Defense Framework that creates a foundation for increased strategic defense and security cooperation between the United States and Ukraineby providing the latter country with advanced anti-tank and other weaponry, along with a robust training and exercise program in keeping with Ukraine’s status as NATO’s Partner of Greater Opportunity.

That statement was another exercise meant to punch the bear in the face. It is a new contribution to a process that NATO (that is, Washington) has perfected since in 1998 Bill Clinton violated George HW Bush’s firm promise not to expand NATO eastward, a decision that prompted strong warnings from senior diplomats. level, from George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock, William Burns (current director of the CIA) and many others, and brought Secretary of Defense William Perry close to resigning in protest, along with a long list of other officials attentive. That, of course, in addition to the aggressive actions that directly hit Russian interests (Serbia, Iraq, Libya and other lesser crimes), carried out in order to maximize humiliation.

It does not test credulity to suspect that the joint statement was a factor in inducing Putin and the narrow circle of tough men surrounding him to decide to reinforce his annual mobilization of forces on the Ukrainian border, in an effort to gain some attention to his security concerns, in this case down to direct criminal aggression, which we can certainly compare with the Nazi invasion of Poland (in conjunction with Stalin).

The neutralization of Ukraine is the main element of a constructive program, but there is more. There must be moves towards some kind of federal organization for Ukraine that includes a certain degree of autonomy for the Donbas region, along with the outlines of what remains of Minsk II. Once again, it would not be something new in world affairs. No two cases are identical, nor is there any real example anywhere that is nearly perfect, but federal structures exist in Switzerland and Belgium, among others, including the United States, to some extent. Serious diplomatic efforts could find a solution to this problem, or at least contain the flames.

And the flames are real. It is estimated that 15,000 people have perished in the conflict in this region from 2014 to date.

That leaves us with Crimea. In this regard, the West has two options: One is to recognize that Russian annexation is simply a fact of life for now, irreversible without actions that would destroy Ukraine and possibly elsewhere. The other is to disregard the very likely consequences and make heroic gestures about how the United States will never recognize the Russian intention to annex Crimea, as the joint declaration proclaims, accompanied by many eloquent pronouncements by others who are ready to condemn Ukraine to total catastrophe while proclaiming how brave they are. Like it or not, those are the options.

Does Putin want occupy all of Ukraine and rebuild the Russian empire? His announced purposes (primarily neutralization) are very different, including his statement that it would be insane to try to rebuild the Soviet Union, but perhaps he has something like that in mind. If so, it is hard to imagine what he and his circle would do. For Russia, occupying the Ukraine would make his experience in Afghanistan seem like a picnic in the park. By now that is very clear.

Putin has the military capacity – and, judging by Chechnya and other escapades, the moral capacity – to leave Ukraine in smoldering ruins. That means there would be no occupation, no Russian empire and no Putin.

Our eyes are rightly focused on the mounting horrors of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. However, it would be a mistake to forget that the joint declaration is just one of the pleasures that the imperial mind is silently conjuring up.

A few weeks ago we examined President Biden’s National Defense Authorization Act, as little known as the joint statement. This brilliant document – ​​I quote Michael Klare again – calls for the formation an unbroken chain of US-armed sentinel states stretching from Japan and South Korea in the North Pacific to Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore in the south, and India on China’s eastern flankfor the purpose of encircling China, including Taiwan, which is quite ominous.

We may ask how China feels about reports that the US Indo-Pacific Command plans to tighten the fence, doubling its spending in fiscal 2022, in part to develop a network of precision missiles along the so-called first chain of islands. For defensive purposes, of course, so the Chinese government has nothing to worry about.

-There is little doubt that the aggression against Ukraine violates the theory of just war, and that NATO is morally responsible for the crisis. But what about Ukraine arming civilians to fight the invaders? Is it justified on the same grounds that morally justified the resistance against the Nazis?

–The just war theory, unfortunately, has as much relevance in the real world as the humanitarian interventionthe responsibility to protect wave defense of democracy.

On the surface, it seems like a truism to say that a people in arms has the right to defend itself against a brutal aggressor. But, as always happens in this sad world, doubts arise when we think about it a little.

Let’s talk about the resistance against the Nazis. It’s hard to think of a more noble cause. We can certainly understand and sympathize with the motives of Herschel Grynszpan when he assassinated a German diplomat in 1938, or the British-trained partisans who assassinated the murderous German Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942. And we can admire their courage and passion for Justice, no qualifications.

But it is not the end of the matter. The former gave the Nazis the pretext for the Kristallnacht atrocities and pushed the Nazi program toward its dire consequences. The seconds led to the heinous massacres of Lidice.

Events have consequences. The innocent suffer, perhaps terribly. People who have a moral fiber can’t dodge those questions. Those questions keep coming up when we consider whether and how to arm those who courageously resist murderous aggression.

That is the least of the doubts. In the present case, we also have to ask ourselves what risks we are willing to take with respect to a nuclear war, which would not only mean the end of Ukraine but much more, even the unthinkable indeed.

It is not encouraging to read that more than a third of Americans favor a military action (in Ukraine) even at the risk of a nuclear conflict with Russiaperhaps inspired by commentators and political leaders who should think twice about their interpretations of Winston Churchill.

Perhaps ways can be found to provide Ukraine’s defenders with the necessary weapons to repel the aggressors, and avoid disastrous consequences. But we must not delude ourselves into believing that it is a simple matter, to be settled with bold statements.

Q: Do you anticipate dramatic political events in Russia if the war lasts much longer, or if the Ukrainians hold out even after the formal battles are over? After all, the Russian economy is already under siege and could end in an economic collapse unprecedented in recent history.

I don’t know enough about Russia to risk even a guess. A person who knows enough at least to speculate – and only that, as he reminds us – is Anatol Lieven, whose insights have been a very helpful guide throughout all of this. He considers that the dramatic political events they are highly unlikely, given the nature of the hard-nosed kleptocracy that Putin has painstakingly constructed. Among the most optimistic forecasts, the most likely scenario, Lieven writes, “is a kind of semi-coup, largely unobvious to the public, whereby Putin and his immediate associates will ‘voluntarily’ leave power in exchange for guarantees of personal immunity from arrest and for wealth of their families. Who would succeed him as president, under those circumstances, is a totally open question.” And it is not necessarily a pleasant matter to consider.

Originally Posted on Truthout

Translation: Jorge Anaya