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Kouros's avatar

Mr. Tooze. Please allow me to burst your bubble and correct the record. Here is from Mr. George Beebe, Director with Russian Analysis in the CIA during Bush / Cheney regime, you know, the guys that insisted and ultimately forced most of the other major NATO allies to relent to the 2008 Bucharest declaration for an open invitation to Ukraine and Georgia into NATO:

“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-s-ukraine-invasion-may-have-been-preventable-n1290831

Basically the USofA leadership was actually gambling that Russia will not keep its word for not allowing Ukraine in NATO. Despite the many years of Russian (and western) warnings that this will not be allowed to happen.

And what else the US was doing? In 2021 entered in a bilateral military alliance with Ukraine. Allowed Ukraine to pas legislation in 2021 to the effect of requiring the government to retake control of all Ukrainian territories, including Crimea by all means necessary, including military. Allowed Ukraine to mobilize in spring 2021 and send troops to Donbas. Then panicked when Russia responded in kind.

Those Ukrainian troops stayed there and were allowed in early February 2022 to start a massive artillery shelling on Donbas, as in preparation for an intervention. On the diplomatic front, the US refused any of the Russian proposals submitted for consideration in late 2022. Never mind the fact that as with Germany and France, (admitted by Merkel, Hollande, Poroshenko and Zelenskyi) supported and encouraged Ukraine to not implement the Minsk 2 Accord (a de jure international law sanctioned by the UNSC). While Ukrainians elected with a huge majority Zelensky on his promise to implement Minsk 2 and improve relations with Russia (talk about the will of the people and democracy here).

So basically in early February 2022, Ukraine was prepared to take by stealth Donbas, with a force differential of 3:1 against the militias from Donetsk and Lugansk rebels.

And the bet was that Russia would "stay its hand". And then the result was not as expected. And now it is obvious that Russian action did not "fail".

Also on the diplomatic front, let's remember the Russo-Ukrainian negotiations in March/April in Istanbul, almost ready to by signed off. And then what happens? Boris Johnson flies like a rocket to Kiev (let's remember the week long slog of French and British third rate diplomats in August 1939, sailing on a commercial freighter to Russia to discuss a potential alliance against Germany, who was itching for war against Poland, but had no delegated authority to commit to anything) and Bucha happened and then Ukraine exits the peace negotiations. Coincidence? The word from knowing parties is that it was not a coincidence.

No matter how much you Mr. Tooze and Politico and the rest of the west are trying to whitewash this and gaslight us in focusing on Mr. Putin and Russia, we all know that the focus should be on why did the US not utter and put on paper the following simple sentence:

"Ukraine will not join NATO, now nor ever and it better revert its Constitution to become again a neutral country, as it was prior to the change made in 2019." You know, like Mexico is.

Occam's Razor clearly indicates that the tragedy of Ukraine is all US doing Mr. Tooze and there is no way around this.

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Daniel Ess's avatar

"We have experienced this before. For many of us that moment came in 2002 and 2003 when we watched with horror the massing of the “coalition of the willing”, including our own country’s forces, for the invasion of Iraq."

Mr. Tooze pulls his punches here in not declaring the illegal invasion of Iraq as an American-led and American-sponsored operation, predicated and abetted on the ruse of the false evidence "story" of the presence of "weapons of mass destruction". The expression "including our own country's forces" offers an impression/interpretation that Washington was merely a participant.

Does a brand new U.S. administration- in this case the Biden foreign policy team- act as a comprehensive and reliable reset of Washington's credibility in defining or writing "the first draft of history" about the invasion of Ukraine?

Anyone interested in the Pentagon's first draft of how they intend to frame the "narrative" of the invasion of Ukraine might be inclined to check out the Politico "oral history"; but, in my view, Mr. Tooze should have left it at that; he certainly had no need to highlight and step out his own play-by-play chronology of this already "distilled" first pass at history-making. Insulting.

When is a "spy-balloon" not a spy balloon; when is a "lab leak" not a lab leak: the point is to get out ahead with your version, your narrative, then frame that version as a "proven fact".

I have a very "low confidence" in this particular framing of Putin's horrific war.

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