[Peace-discuss] Ukraine NATO McKay

[Paul Mueth]

In text. 










Why expand NATO? Why did successive US Presidents go against the advice of noted former diplomats, military men and politicians in pushing NATO eastward long after the USSR had imploded and the successor states had all reverted to capitalism?

Let us start from first premises. The US as the pre-eminent capitalist power and dominant imperialist nation is compelled by its position to conquer new markets, find more natural resources and (crucially) new sources of labour to exploit. This is the underlying force.

>From that foundation, that need to constantly expand in the quest for new markets comes the strategic needs on top of that. The US empire must get into and secure these markets before it's enemies and rivals do this necessitates military deployments & building up of proxy forces

In the case of Europe the end of the Cold War opened up a new range of markets in the former socialist states that composed the old Warsaw Pact. The US and it's European vassals saw the potential of opening up those previously state run economies and extracting wealth from them.

That's really what the destruction of Yugoslavia was all about. Ensuring that no political force could get in the way of the US aligned block dominating those countries economically and the easiest way to do what was to break up the country into a series of small, weak states.

For the rest of Eastern Europe they didn't have to work so hard. The new pro-capitalist rulers willingly ran headlong into signing over economic control of the country to the US led imperial block. In this case the German ruling class were the principal beneficiaries.

Across all of Eastern Europe the sovereignty that most of the "nationalist" forces had spent years proclaiming that they wanted back was rapidly surrendered to the US (for military affairs) and Germany for economic affairs. Sovereignty and democracy did not last long for them.

The question arises however, when Russian capitalism was much weaker and both Yeltsin and Putin made offers to join NATO why did the US not take up this offer? Putin has stated that Clinton shrugged this and made non-committal noises. The NATO-Russia engagement remained a facade.

Why did the US and it's vassals not rework NATO into a new organisation that would both incorporate Russia and achieve that aim of the US in conquering new markets as well as securing it's current spheres of influence?

The answer to this involves an examination of the competing motives inside the US government, military and civilian bureaucracies. The US, like any other nation, has it's policy formed on the basis of the interests of US capitalism as outlined above.

But how does that class interest become US government policy? Policy in this case regarding NATO is shaped by the various factions within the state department, it's associated think tanks (which different ruling class factions pay to produce ideas and policies) and academia.

The decision made by Clinton over the first wave of NATO expansion was contested by many including his own Secretary of Defence William Perry. There was a clear lobby for NATO expansion led by Vice President Al Gore (remember him?) In the end Clinton accepted Gores arguments.

Gore was of course speaking for the faction within the State Department (headed at the time by anti Russian uber hawk Madeleine Albright) which saw Russia, even in it's weakened state of the 1990's as a potential future competitor.

This school of thought also had it's adherents in Britain of course and was behind the Mi6/CIA interference with the Chechen wars. When Putin says that there is a plan within US government circles to trigger the break up of Russia he's not wrong. Those factions do exist.

This faction sees Russia as too big, with too many natural resources at it's disposal and too powerful a military force to remain a biddable vassal of the US. This faction is represented by people like Victoria Nuland and others who were pushing Russia-gate in the Trump era.

There are other factions of course. Those called "realists" (such as the academic John Mearsheimer and many officials of the previous era) regard the Russians as possible to strike a bargain with. Though their reasons for doing so are so they can fight the "real" enemy - China.

With the US's power as a global hegemon declining there are also multiple disagreements as to how the US government should respond to this. The realists want to pivot to a cold war with the Chinese over influence in the Pacific region specifically.

There are others who see US presence in Europe as a distraction and that the US would be better served by quitting Europe entirely to focus on China. Trump flirted with this point of view then the neo-con factions fought back with Russia-gate as their weapon.

I go into these details to emphasise that policy making in governmental circles is always a battle over how best to assert the fundamental interests of US capitalism. Each of these factions is looking for a means to deal with US decline and they battle for control over policy.

These factions (including the military) all have their chosen journalists they leak stories too, a phalanx of pet intellectuals at their disposal and are all aligned with think tanks funded by various capitalist interests. Policy making is a contested process here.

This leads us back to the question of NATO expanson. George W Bush expanded NATO mainly for opportunist reasons. The neo-cons wanted more relaible vassals in NATO after the dispute over the Iraq invasion with France and Germany. For that reason the Baltic states were fast tracked

The "Rose revolution" in Georgia the "orange revolution" or Maidan Part 1 in Ukraine were also part of this picture of the US government trying to bring these countries wholly under the control of the US and away from the post-Soviet rulers who attempted a balancing act.

Shervadnadze, Kuchma, Yanukovych and Milosevic in Yugoslavia were all pro-capitalist politicians, all had relations with the US. But they either weren't enough of an outright stooge or tried to maintain some positive relations with Russia. That was too much for the US.

The overall aim here by those planning this out was to ring Russia with NATO bases and this be able exert pressure on the Moscow government. The aim was not direct war but to create a permanent situation of instability within Russia itself.

Obama thought that the Ukraine policy was not the greatest of ideas. But as with Libya when the powerful factions within his own party and the Washington militarist clique demanded he "act" he was not prepared to refuse their demands.

US Presidents have limited political capital and also sit upon a series of bureaucracies and interests within the Federal Government which can turn viscerally hostile if their interests are denied by a President. Just look what they did to Trump for even the mildest of things.

Obama, being a politician who advanced his career by placating different powerful political factions was always wary about taking these interests on, that's why he mostly didn't. He was told by William Burns that the Ukraine policy was a bad idea but was not prepared to stop it.

US Presidents, the smarter of them, exists within a complex web of relations inside a machine which is often barely under control. None of them, even those like Trump who saw conflict with Russia as a negative, was prepared to stop the direction of travel.

So to conclude and reiterate my point here. US imperialism must conquer and control new markets 

and resources in order to maintain its power and the profitability of US capitalism. How this need of its ruling class is translated into policy is contingent upon various factors

These factors are economic, military, political but also bureaucratic. They rest upon relations within the US government and its relationship with its vassal states. Policy is made by the different factions within the US government responding to these factors.

The expansion of NATO continues because the forces favouring it inside the US have been the most coherent and determined group. US politicians are unwilling to spend their political capital on a foreign policy issue with little perceived domestic reward for them.

And so NATO expands eastwards with complacent Presidents hiring idiots like Michael Mcfaul who tell them not to worry, that the Russian threats of reprisals aren't real. And now the US has been caught out.

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