OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #62, February 23, 2022

Soviet Phobia/Russo Phobia: In the 1990s US decided to expand NATO threateningly eastward and to exclude Russia.  (Dick)

Rajan Menon, War with Russia?

February 8, 2022.

Progress? Let's see. We've gone from unending wars in distant lands against enemies capable of little more than wielding firearms and roadside bombs -- and those conflicts were disasters -- to the possibility of a war in the European heartland between nuclear-armed foes. I mean, honestly, what could possibly go wrong?

And it was all fated to happen in Europe because of that anti-democratic nightmare of an autocrat Vladimir Putin. Pay no attention to the much-beloved (by Fox News) autocrat of NATO member and "democratic" Hungary, Viktor Orbán, or Donald Trump's attempts to create his own version of an autocracy here. (Had that all-American Putin lover been a little sharper, he might have succeeded and, of course, he or a next-generation Trumpster might still do so.) In today's Washington, it's clear: we're still the defenders of democracy, pure and simple, and Ukraine is just another case of the same.

As TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon points out today, we're acting as if the Ukraine situation came out of nowhere thanks to the Vlad, when it's actually a post-Cold War train wreck long in the making. To grasp that, however, you need a little historical perspective on American policy after the Soviet Union collapsed, that now-classic moment when our leaders became convinced that the world was simply ours forever and a day. So, step into Menon's time machine and head back to those years to get a better sense of where we truly are today. Tom

How Did We Get Here?

The Strategic Blunder of the 1990s That Set the Stage for Today's Ukrainian Crisis By Rajan Menon.  
https://tomdispatch.com/how-did-we-get-here/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=818cd5b209-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_13_02_04_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1e41682ade-818cd5b209-308836209

Understandably enough, commentaries on the crisis between Russia and the West tend to dwell on Ukraine. After all, more than 100,000 Russian soldiers and a fearsome array of weaponry have now been emplaced around the Ukrainian border. Still, such a narrow perspective deflects attention from an American strategic blunder that dates to the 1990s and is still reverberating.

During that decade, Russia was on its knees. Its economy had shrunk by nearly 40%, while unemployment was surging and inflation skyrocketing. (It reached a monumental 86% in 1999.) The Russian military was a mess. Instead of seizing the opportunity to create a new European order that included Russia, President Bill Clinton and his foreign-policy team squandered it by deciding to expand NATO threateningly toward that country's borders. Such a misbegotten policy guaranteed that Europe would once again be divided, even as Washington created a new order that excluded and progressively alienated post-Soviet Russia.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.