Although supporters of the Russian invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine blame “U.S. imperialism” for the Ukraine War, the U.S. role has been relatively minor. The major actors have been Ukrainians, striving for independence, and Russians, striving to end it.
For centuries, a great many Ukrainians, chafing under Czarist and, later, Soviet rule, longed for national independence. This rejection of Russian domination―based in part on Stalin’s extermination of four million Ukrainians through starvation―was confirmed in 1991 when the leaders of the disintegrating Soviet Union authorized a plebiscite. In the voting, more than 90 percent of Ukrainian participants opted for independence rather than membership in the new Russian Federation. Accordingly, Ukraine was recognized by Russia and the rest of the world as an independent, sovereign nation.
This agreement on Ukraine’s sovereignty was firmed up by the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which the Russian, U.S., and British governments pledged to respect its independence and borders. For its part, Ukraine agreed to, and did, turn over its very substantial nuclear arsenal to Russia.
But elements of the Russian government regretted this arrangement, believing, as President Vladimir Putin lamented in 2005, that the break-up of the Soviet Union had been “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Kremlin officials looked nervously on “color revolutions” in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, rebuilt their nation’s armed forces, and intervened militarily in Georgia and Syria. Meanwhile, they kept a watchful eye on Ukraine where, for a time, the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, kept their hopes alive for a return to Russian hegemony.
As things turned out, developments did not go well for them in Ukraine, where Yanukovych’s extensive corruption, authoritarian behavior, and reversal of his promise to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union led to three months of massive anti-government demonstrations and deadly shootings of protesters by police. Finally, in February 2014, abandoning a last-minute agreement he had signed with the political opposition for a broader cabinet, Yanukovych fled to Russia.
Although the Russian government and its sympathizers claim that this popular upheaval was a “coup,” the reality is quite different. The “Revolution of Dignity,” as most Ukrainians called it, had widespread popular support. After Yanukovych abandoned his post, the Ukrainian parliament removed him from office by a vote of 328 to 0. Elections for a new president were quickly organized and held democratically.
Claims that the U.S. government organized this alleged “coup” are equally flimsy. The most frequently cited “evidence” is a private conversation between Victoria Nuland, U.S. assistant secretary of state, and the U.S. ambassador, in which they discussed various Ukrainian politicians. But the conversation occurred long after the rebellion began and contained no suggestion of ousting Yanukovych. The Russian government and its supporters also point to a 2013 public address in Washington, DC in which Nuland stated that, starting in 1991, the U.S. government invested over $5 billion to support a variety of the new nation’s programs. The money, spent over a 20-year period, funded things like anti-AIDS ventures, reproductive healthcare, and business start-ups. But there is no evidence that it went for protest demonstrations or a “coup.”
With the downfall of Yanukovych, the Russian government mobilized its military forces to seize and annex Crimea, and also stirred up and armed separatist uprisings in the Donbas. After Ukrainian defense forces made considerable headway against the Donbas rebellion, the Kremlin sent in heavily armed and disguised Russian troops that turned the tide of battle.
The U.S. government response to this Russian military assault upon Ukraine was remarkably mild. Pessimistic about Ukraine’s future, President Obama refused to provide lethal aid to the weak Ukrainian armed forces. Although the Trump administration did begin providing such aid in 2017, the weapons weren’t approved for use at the front for another three years. In addition, Trump not only developed a remarkably close relationship with Putin but cut off diplomatic contacts with Ukraine other than through his close associate, Rudy Giuliani. Eventually, he cut off U.S. aid, as well and urged Zelensky to strike a deal with Putin.
Nor did the U.S. government attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO. Doing so, of course, would have been in conformity with international law, which does not ban military alliances. Russia, in fact, heads up such an alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization. What is banned by international law such as the UN Charter is “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This explains why a hefty majority of nations in the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia’s seizure of Crimea.
Instead of taking a hard line toward Russian expansionism, the U.S. government went along with its NATO partners, Germany and France, that brokered compromise accords―the Minsk agreements of 2014-15 among Russia, Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Designed to resolve the conflict in the Donbas, Minsk I and Minsk II required a ceasefire, withdrawal of foreign military forces, the disbanding of illegal armed groups, a return of the Ukrainian side of the international border with Russia to Ukraine’s control, and limited autonomy for the Luhansk and Donetsk regions―all to be supervised by the OSCE.
The underlying problem, though, was that the Russian government was determined to control all of Ukraine rather than merely the Donbas, while the Ukrainian government feared that Russian control of Ukrainian provinces would subvert Ukraine’s national independence. As a result, both the Russian and the Ukrainian government repeatedly violated the Minsk agreements, with Russia brazenly declaring that it was not a party to the conflict in Ukraine and, therefore, was not bound by their terms. Most of this sad history eluded Trump, who apparently viewed Ukraine primarily as a tool to embarrass his 2020 election rival, Joseph Biden.
Although the Biden administration responded much more firmly to the February 2022 full-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine, what is also striking are the limits on U.S. assistance. As the Ukrainians fought desperately for their nation’s survival against the Russian onslaught, the U.S. government ruled out a response by U.S. military forces, rejected implementing a “no-fly zone,” repeatedly warned the Ukrainian government to confine its military response to Ukrainian territory, and responded to pleas by the Ukrainian government for more powerful weapons reluctantly and belatedly.
Even today, when the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians support continued resistance to the Russian invaders, leading U.S. politicians have called for abandoning Ukraine to its fate, while major figures in the U.S. foreign policy establishment argue for compromise with Russia because “Ukraine’s goals are coming into conflict with other Western interests.”
If this U.S. record constitutes “imperialism,” then the word has lost much of its meaning.
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1 Comment
Wittner, a historian who has done very valuable work, here offers a mere stream of State Department propaganda. On numerous points he closely matches US militarist arguments even when mainstream scholarship has long since put the lie to those talking points. This is a particularly perplexing attitude toward critical history for an academic with roots in the anti-nuclear movement.
A few examples:
Wittner refers to “Stalin’s extermination of four million Ukrainians through starvation,” yet the bulk of scholars reject the claim that the Ukrainian famine was an “extermination” or genocide. Crucially, since the opening of Soviet-era archives, it is now understood that Ukraine was not alone in its tragedy. Other Soviet regions, including Russia itself, also suffered severe famine at the same time (and that which occurred in Kazakhstan was even more acute than in Ukraine). Further, it is documented that Stalin did make (inadequate) efforts to ameliorate the famine when he was made aware of it.
Accordingly, none of the following specialist works accept the genocide thesis: Viola – Peasant Rebels Under Stalin (Oxford 1999); Lee – Stalin and the Soviet Union (Routledge 1999); Fitzpatrick – Everyday Stalinism (Oxford 2000); Rees – The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship (Palgrave Macmillan 2004); Davies and Harris – Stalin: A New History (Cambridge 2005). Leading famine scholar Cormac O’Grada also finds that the Ukrainian famine did not amount to a genocide. (O’Grada – Famine: A Short History (Princeton 2009)).
A recent biographer of Stalin is Oleg Khlevniuk of the Russian state archives who is the leading Russian authority on the Russian leader. Khlevniuk, himself Ukrainian, attributes the famine chiefly to Stalin’s collectivisation policy while the charge of anti-Ukrainian genocide is mentioned only in a footnote. (Khlevniuk – Stalin: New Biography (Yale 2015)). Also noteworthy is that the two most authoritative textbooks of Ukrainian history in english also reject the genocide thesis. (See Subtelny – Ukraine: A History (University of Toronto 2000), Ch. 21; Magocsi – History of Ukraine (University of Toronto 2010), Ch. 44. See also the fascinating work of Mark Edele in his Debates on Stalinism (Manchester University 2020), Ch. 9.)
This seeming chorus of scholarly agreement notwithstanding, the February 2022 Russian invasion saw the genocide claim take on a new popularity in mainstream discussion. Since anti-Russian bigotry is in vogue, weak but serviceable claims can be heard far and wide, to great approval in intellectual circles.
Wittner again: “Claims that the U.S. government organized this alleged ‘coup’ [in 2014] are equally flimsy.” He then zeroes in on the infamous leaked recording of Victoria Nuland (“F**k the EU”) speaking with the American ambassador and surmises flatly that “the conversation occurred long after the rebellion began and contained no suggestion of ousting Yanukovych.” Again this flies in the face of the findings of leading historians.
One of the most widely respected scholars of US-Russia relations saw the Nuland recording quite differently: “[T]he essential revelation [of the Nuland recording] was that high-level U.S. officials were plotting to ‘midwife’ a new, anti-Russian government by ousting or neutralizing Yanukovych, the democratically elected president—that is, a coup.” (Stephen F. Cohen, War with Russia? (2019))
Similary, Richard Sakwa, a leading scholar on Ukraine and Russia says of the Nuland recording: “It reveals the high degree of US meddling in Ukrainian affairs, and the way that the concerns of its ostensible allies and partners are dismissed with a profanity.” (R. Sakwa – Frontline Ukraine (I.B. Tauris 2016), p.133). This “meddling” and profane dismissal of the EU are surely hallmarks of an imperialist style of rule.
Wittner also refers to “deadly shootings of protesters by police” in the 2014 Maidan protests in Kiev. Yet there is growing evidence (by now overwhelming) that most of the protesters were in fact shot by Maidan-aligned snipers, largely from suites in a hotel which were famously occupied by Maidan protesters. The recent work of Ukrainian-Canadian historian Ivan Katchanovsky provides the illuminating documentation.
Next, Wittner’s account of Russia’s violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum omits a vital fact: The Clinton administration violated the US agreement with Russia in regard to NATO expansion. (For an excellent review of this, see Noam Chomsky’s address to the Douglass Dialogues (April 10/23) on Youtube.)
The theme of Wittner’s essay is that American policy concerning Ukraine does not merit the term “imperialism.” Yet for three decades Washington’s most respected diplomats and Russia specialists were crystal clear that NATO expansion was “needlessly provocative” (Burns), a “fateful error [which] may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion” (Kennan). Importantly, though Russia would possibly tolerate NATO absorption of some of Eastern Europe, it was known that NATO membership for Ukraine (and Georgia) was a Russian red line.
Thus, while Wittner stands by American innocence, the US’s own elite planners saw provocations and danger. Wittner thus has to ignore major historians and leading American diplomats, while relying on hawkish talking points, to proclaim there is no American imperialism.