Wait for it. It's America's fault:
Beginning with the Clinton administration, and supported by every subsequent Republican and Democratic president and Congress, the US-led West has unrelentingly moved its military, political and economic power ever closer to post-Soviet Russia. Spearheaded by NATO’s eastward expansion, already encamped in the three former Soviet Baltic republics on Russia’s border—and now augmented by missile defense installations in neighboring states—this bipartisan, winner-take-all approach has come in various forms.
This has got to be one of the best "it's our fault" arguments, in its total condemnation of Western policy.
I don't even know what the author means when he says we moved our military, political, and economic power closer to post-Soviet Russia.
We have very little military power close to Russia--that's why speaking of military intervention in Ukraine is pointless. This is also why talk of actually moving NATO military forces into the new NATO countries is taking place:
Since 1999, when it began admitting former members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, NATO has had a self-imposed restriction on permanently basing alliance forces in eastern Europe. However, Poland and Romania have agreed to host parts of the U.S. anti-ballistic missile shield and NATO air forces take turns to provide air cover over the Baltic states.
A senior NATO diplomat said the Crimean crisis would probably lead to the issue of permanent bases being discussed. "I think that these are the sorts of things that ministers are likely to talk about in the next couple of days," he said.
Remember, moving a handful of American planes into Poland and the Baltic States air patrols was a major increase in our capabilities there.
And let's not even go into how there are no logistics to support major NATO deployments into the former Soviet sphere.
Yes, our political power is there--because former vassal states of the Soviet Union wanted to switch teams. And newly Westernized states have made more economic progress than those that did not move West like Belarus and Ukraine. What of it?
The author seems to have internalized the Brezhnev Doctrine that stated once you go Soviet-controlled, you never go back. The Nation holds this is an inviolable law even after the communist state that established the rule of perpetual control ceased to exist. There is no freedom to associate once you are embraced by the Soviets or their Russian successors. That's amazing.
The Nation is eager to blame America. Of course they are. I'd expect no less of those loons.
But at least they are a little more sophisticated than the Russians in explaining why Western influence must be opposed in Ukraine:
Since the beginning of the Ukrainian revolution last fall, Russian television has strayed rather far from the truth. At first, the demonstrations in favor of Ukraine’s European course were ignored, and then presented as a matter of hundreds or thousands of people—instead of hundreds of thousands. When the fact and the size of the protests could no longer be denied, Ukrainian protesters were slandered as fascists, while the leaders of the three major opposition parties were labeled gay.
Geopolitical analysis, that isn't.
But the reason Russia is opposing the West can't be laid to rest on any of our policies between 1989 and 2014. Forget Kosovo. Forget Georgia. Forget NATO expansion. No, Putin himself said exactly why he must move west and oppose the West if we resist:
Russian President Vladimir Putin told the nation Monday that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and had fostered separatist movements inside Russia.
In his annual state of the nation address to parliament and the country’s top political leaders, Putin said the Soviet collapse also was a tragedy for Russians.
“First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin said. “As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.
“The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself,” he said, referring to separatist movements such as those in Chechnya.
It is wrong to say that anything we did between 1992 and 2014 has caused Russia to become our foe around the world, from arming China, Venezuela, Iran, and Syria to threatening Europe with nuclear weapons, claiming the Arctic, running interference for Iran's nuclear efforts, and attacking Georgia and Ukraine.
No, the "fault" for Russia's aggressiveness now that they are regaining a small amount of the power that the former Soviet Union had was the span from 1989 to 1991--from the loss of Moscow's eastern European empire (the Warsaw Pact) to the collapse of the Russian empire itself when the non-Russian pieces took their opportunity to escape.
Putin never believed in the end of history. He believed Russia (in the guise of the USSR) lost the Cold War and Putin is doing whatever he can to reverse that loss and restore Russian glory and status by regaining that ground.
Yes, Russians are in those new nations. But does anybody ask why? The reason is that the Soviet Union sent colonists from Russia and attempted to Russify the locals in order to make sure that mere communism wasn't the way to bind the contiguous colonies to Mother Russia. These Russian minorities are the demographic echoes of past aggression and not the justification for humanitarian rescue.
Ultimately, I'm pretty sure that The Nation staff pretty much agrees with Putin's assessment. Today's problems with Putin are our fault for daring to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War and end the quest for Heaven on Earth that Soviet Communism promised the world.
The Soviets may have lost everything in Europe after 1991, including Russia itself. But the Soviets still hold The Nation. Brezhnev would be so proud.
