Why the Ukraine war is about to get worse

Plus links on the Maidan massacre as a false flag, NATO enlargement as a form of Euro-Orientalism, the role of the Biden administration in the Kerch Bridge attacks, and the coming war on China.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has had massive global economic repercussions — but the worst may be yet to come. I’ve written for UnHerd about the unraveling of two agreements put in place at the start of the Ukraine war to limit the global economic fallout from the conflict: the Black Sea Grain Initiative, whereby Russia allowed Ukraine to continue exporting grain via the Black Sea (which is under its control), and a deal that allowed Russian gas to continue flowing to Europe via Ukraine. The former has just been suspended, and the latter could soon be terminated. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, in particular, was an incredible achievement: for two countries engaged in a brutal war against each other, against the background of a global proxy war between the West and Russia, reaching an agreement of this kind was a big, if rare, victory for international diplomacy.

But with no end to the war in sight, and all sides engaged in increasingly brazen military brinkmanship, is anyone really surprised that a deal that hinged entirely on Russia’s goodwill has come undone? Meanwhile, Ukraine’s energy minister said that Kyiv is unlikely to renew the gas transit deal when Ukraine’s supply contract with Gazprom expires in 2024. In practice, this would mean the closure of one of the last arteries still carrying Russian gas to Europe, a move which would severely weaken many energy-dependent EU countries. For a continent already struggling with creeping deindustrialisation, the consequences could be devastating. Read the article here.

And now, for paying subscribers only, here’s a selection of some of the best articles (with extracts and comments) I’ve read this week. The topics include: further proof that the Maidan massacre was a false flag; NATO enlargement as a form of Euro-Orientalism; the role of the Biden administration in the Kerch Bridge attacks; the coming war on China, and much more.

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Let’s start with Ukraine. Jeffrey Sachs — who is truly on fire lately, putting out one great piece after another — has a new article out about “the real history of the war in Ukraine”, where he explains that the true responsibility for the continuation of the conflict lies not with Putin but rather with Biden:

Biden is the one who is trapping Ukraine in an open-ended war by continuing to push NATO enlargement to Ukraine. He is afraid to tell the truth to the American and Ukrainian people, rejecting diplomacy, and opting instead for perpetual war. … Throughout his entire career, Biden has served the military-industrial complex. He has relentlessly promoted NATO enlargement and supported America’s deeply destabilizing wars of choice in Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. He defers to generals who want more war and more “surges,” and who predict imminent victory just ahead to keep the gullible public onside.

The only way to save Ukraine is a negotiated peace. In a negotiated settlement, the US would agree that NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine while Russia would agree to withdraw its troops. Remaining issues — Crimea, the Donbas, US and European sanctions, the future of European security arrangements — would be handled politically, not by endless war. Russia has repeatedly tried negotiations: to try to forestall the eastward enlargement of NATO; to try to find suitable security arrangements with the US and Europe; to try to settle inter-ethnic issues in Ukraine after 2014 (the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements); to try to sustain limits on anti-ballistic missiles; and to try to end the Ukraine war in 2022 via direct negotiations with Ukraine.

In all cases, the US government disdained, ignored, or blocked these attempts, often putting forward the big lie that Russia rather than the US rejects negotiations. JFK said it exactly right in 1961: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate”. If only Biden would heed JFK’s enduring wisdom.

For further confirmation of what Sachs says, one simply needs to look at Biden’s recent promotion of two of the administration’s most virulent hawks: Victoria Nuland and Charles Q. Brown. Nuland, who has just been placed as second-in-command within the State Department, right behind Tony Blinken, is infamously known for being the primary architect of the 2014 regime change operation in Ukraine, which, as Aaron Maté explained last year, paved the way to the war we’re seeing there today. As Responsible Statecraft’s Connor Echols writes:

Nuland’s appointment will be a boon for Russia hawks who want to turn up the heat on the Kremlin. But, for those who favor a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine, a promotion for the notoriously “undiplomatic diplomat” will be a bitter pill. A few quick reminders are in order. When Nuland was serving in the Obama administration, she had a now-infamous leaked call with the US ambassador to Ukraine. As the Maidan Uprising roiled the country, the pair of American diplomats discussed conversations with opposition leaders, and Nuland expressed support for putting Arseniy Yatseniuk into power. (Yatseniuk would become prime minister later that month, after Russia-friendly former President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country).

At one memorable point in the call, Nuland said “Fu–k the EU” in response to Europe’s softer stance on the protests. The controversy surrounding the call — and larger implications of US involvement in the ouster of Yanukovych — kicked up tensions with Russia and contributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to seize Crimea and support an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Her handing out food to demonstrators on the ground in Kyiv probably didn’t help either. Nuland, along with State Department sanctions czar Daniel Fried, then led the effort to punish Putin through sanctions. Another official at State reportedly asked Fried if “the Russians realize that the two hardest-line people in the entire US government are now in a position to go after them?”.

Speaking of the 2014 Western-backed coup in Ukraine, a Canadian-Ukrainian political scientist at the University of Ottawa, Ivan Katchanovski, has recently published a peer-reviewed study in which he shows that the event that was instrumental in the overthrow of the Yanukovych government — the so-called Maidan massacre, in which nearly 100 protesters and 13 policemen died, in many cases as a result of shots fired by snipers — was most likely a “‘false flag operation’ organized and covertly conducted by elements of the Maidan leadership and the far right in order to win the asymmetric conflict during the ‘Euromaidan’ [protests] and seize power in Ukraine” — in other words, a coup against a democratically elected government by armed extremist. Even though Western governments and media organs immediately blamed the deaths of the protesters on security forces, Katchanovski writes that: