This is in response to Caitlin Johnstone’s January 28th article, which alleged that not all of the blame for the war in Ukraine goes to Obama’s decisions, and which accused Russia of “warmongering” (and avoided using any such strong term of condemnation against America’s Government), “Why Don’t You Ever Criticize RUSSIA’S Warmongering??”:
She said:
First of all, I actually do sometimes criticize Russia’s warmongering, to the limited extent that I believe it’s necessary in a civilization that’s being deliberately saturated in maximum-amplification criticisms of Russia’s warmongering. That criticism generally goes something like this: Putin is responsible for Putin’s decisions, and the US empire is responsible for the US empire’s decisions. Putin is responsible for deciding to invade Ukraine, and the US empire is responsible for provoking that invasion.
It’s not actually complicated. If I provoke someone into doing a bad thing, then we each have a degree of moral responsibility for the bad thing that was done. So much modern empire apologia revolves around pretending that provocation is simply not a thing; that this very simple and fundamental concept we all learned about as children was just invented last year by the Russian government. It’s bizarre and undignified and people should feel embarrassed for doing it. You know what provocation is. Stop acting like an idiot. …
“Why don’t you ever criticize RUSSIA’S warmongering?”
This is going to blow your mind, but I don’t actually have a Russian audience. I have an English-speaking audience which lives predominantly under the thumb of the western empire. …
“Why don’t you ever criticize RUSSIA’S warmongering?”
Because I don’t want to be a goddamn Pentagon propagandist. … You are responsible for what you put out into the world, and you are responsible for its consequences. Stop functioning as an unpaid empire propagandist just because it’s sometimes awkward not to.
Her entire essay dealt with this matter as being a controversy between “propagandists” on each side, instead of as a matter that is fundamentally about historical truth, versus historical falsity. The present article is about the latter:
The war in Ukraine started during 20-27 February 2014, when the democratically elected and neutralist Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whom both Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had privately tried in 2010 to persuade to join America’s European alliance, the EU and NATO, against Ukraine’s adjoining nation of Russia, instead of for Ukraine to retain its then-existing neutrality as between America and Russia. Only if Ukraine joined the U.S. alliance abgainst Russia could the U.S. Government even possibly post its missiles, including nuclear ones, only 300 miles (five minutes of missile-flying time) away from Moscow, on Ukraine’s border, and thereby checkmate (threaten to blitz-decapitate) Russia in the way that the Soviet Union might have checkmated America if the Soviets had positioned their nuclear missiles 1,131 miles (30 minutes) away from Washington DC in Cuba in 1962 if JFK and Khrushchev hadn’t both been decent individuals and so come to an agreement that prevented a nuclear war between America and the U.S.S.R., during the Cuban Missile Crisis. On 19 April 2022, I provided a “History of the Ukrainian War” that documents, by direct links to its sources, how America’s coup on 20-27 February 2014 (a good video of that coup is here; its smoking-gun part is shown in full here; and an explanation of what the discussants there were referring-to in that smoking gun is here) was done, that grabbed control over Ukraine. Another article from me, on 4 November 2019, “The Obama Regime’s Plan to Seize the Russian Naval Base in Crimea”, documented that Obama had even been intending to steal Russia’s biggest naval base — which was and remains in Crimea; that’s the part of his coup-plan that failed — and to turn it into a U.S. naval base instead, which would have provided sea power, and not only ground-based missiles, to checkmate Russia into surrendering to become another U.S. colony or ‘ally’ in the post-WW-II America’s overall plan, to take control over the entire world. All of the links directly to the ultimate sources are provided in those two articles about the historical background of Ukraine’s war.
Anyone who wants to explore further the history here might also find of interest my 28 January 2023 “What motivated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022”, which closes:
Time was running out for Russia to defend itself short of by going to war directly against the U.S. The only question that had remained for Russia was when and how to invade Ukraine. Whether they did it at the right time and in the right way will be debated-about by future investigative historians, but that it needed to be done was beyond any rational dispute. (Nonetheless, it was virtually universally denied by ‘experts’ in The West. Propaganda can make a majority of the public believe virtually anything, virtually anywhere. I avoid it, everywhere, and rely upon, instead — and link directly to — ONLY evidence that can’t rationally be doubted. Doing this now in The West stands out like a sore thumb; but what Galileo and Darwin wrote, likewise did — because they, likewise, never compromised truth, never misrepresented the available evidence. Historians should follow the same rule. Few do.)
My disagreement with Johnstone on this matter is that it’s not primarily an issue about which side’s propaganda to support, but instead it’s about what the truth is: what the historical record is that explains, in a credible cause-and-effect way — as all of science is required to do — the U.S. regime’s grabbing of Ukraine during 20-27 February 2014, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, which finally responded to that U.S. coup, and to the rabidly anti-Russian regime it installed on Russia’s border, after Russia’s diplomatic methods of responding to that threat against Russia’s national security had failed.
This isn’t a matter of which side’s propaganda to support. It doesn’t make any difference what anyone says; what’s involved here is instead what is. It all comes down to true and false — in the fields of the social sciences, no less than in the physical and biological sciences. Whoever doesn’t care about truth and falsity, doesn’t care about good and evil, because it all comes down to that (true and false) — and, ultimately, to what exists, and to what doesn’t exist. A person who doesn’t care about that, might as well commit suicide, because then there’s nothing that is worth living for, for that person. It makes no difference what anyone says (one side’s propaganda versus the opposite side’s). What exists here, in this matter about history, is that America was the aggressor that started the war in Ukraine, in 2014. Russia now is defending itself against U.S-and-allied aggression. It’s a war between the U.S. and Russia, and it is being waged in the battlefields of Ukraine — by Russia’s forces on the one side, versus Ukrainian forces (and U.S.-and-allied weapons) on the other. And the U.S. and its allies are the aggressor, and Russia is merely defending itself. That’s what the documented historical record proves. Regardless of what anyone’s propaganda says.
Written by Eric Zuesse
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.