Why the West defeated Ukraine?

We are historical beings, colored and scarred by the historical events that have shaped and continue to shape our identities. The recent Ukrainian conflict is an example of an identity-transforming event. We forget often that we are historical beings, and because of incessant images copied by our minds from the media of helpless Ukrainians crossing the border, we narrow down our perspectives to the present, consequently coloring our thoughts with the present and ignoring the narrative and events that have imposed the present condition on us. 

History of the Ukrainian conflict did not begin in 2022, it did not even begin in 2014 when Crimea was annexed by Russia; history, as far as Ukraine is concerned, began in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine. We need to contextualize what is happening now by revisiting history and then fingers will turn from Putin to the West. Ukraine is wrecked today because the West with its mistaken foreign policies pushed it to the brink of disaster that we are seeing before our eyes.

In 1823, James Monroe showed a red flag to Europe when the Europeans started to show interest in militarizing Latin America, Monroe explicitly laid the roots of modern imperialism. In essence Monroe Doctrine says stay away from our neighborhood and we will stay away from your neighborhood: Europe stay away from our borders or face consequences. That was 1823, Putin in 2021 in the last press conference of that year where journalists from all over the world came to speak to the Russian premier stated clearly to the BBC reporter that NATO, specifically the US, has come to our borders and threatened us, what if Russia starts to deploy military personnel in Mexico how would the West feel? 

You hear Monroe Doctrine in the background yet? There are two kinds of causes to any conflict, the deep cause and the precipitating cause. The deep cause defines the structural factors affecting the conflict, the precipitating cause is some concrete event that becomes the deep cause of conflict, a match in an oil barrel sort of.

The deepest cause of the present Ukrainian conflict is NATO expansion. In the 1990s NATO decided to expand itself, it included Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic in the defensive alliance. In between Germany and Russia there are two states Northeastward: Poland and Ukraine. Before the 1990s there were two buffer states between a NATO state and Russia, Poland and Ukraine; by the beginning of this decade just one buffer state was left between them: Ukraine. Hear the alarm bells ringing?

Russia was already alarmed when Poland was included in NATO, but NATO was still not touching the Russian border. In 2000s, all states bordering Russia, i.e. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, except for Ukraine, were made members of NATO. Belarus, another bordering state with Russia, was taken in by Putin to stop further NATO expansion. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania get all their gas supplies from Russia. It is dangerous from small countries like them to agree to join an alliance formed by Russian archenemy when their necessities depend upon Russia.

The final thorn by NATO came in 2008 in Bucharest, in which it was explicitly stated that “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO”. This declaration could have only one consequence: The war in Ukraine today. NATO declaration in 2008 was the precipitating cause, that is why we have Russian tanks on Ukrainian streets today.

In 2014, Obama and other Western leaders were surprised when Putin annexed Crimea. Crimea had a Russian majority ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russians already had a strong military presence there in 2014, they did not annex it, they merely incorporated Crimea officially in Russia. It is also a significant point to note that there was no retaliation from the US or the EU while the Russian tanks were sauntering the streets of Crimea. There is a strong justification of that Western move: Ukraine is not a core strategic state for the US. There are no talks of military intervention even after it has been invaded because the core strategic interests of the US lie in the Middle East because of oil, in the South China Sea because of the trade routes in the Pacific and Central and Western Europe because of trade and security alliances there. The US is as much interested in Ukraine as is China in Papua New Guinea.

Russia has a GDP of around 1.5 trillion dollars, it is a declining great power, it is not a major threat to the US. China has a GDP of more than 14 trillion dollars, much closer to the US GDP figure of 20 trillion dollars. China is a peer-competitor for the US not Russia. In the UN Security Council vote of condemnation against Russian invasion of Ukraine, China and India abstained, that already says a lot to the US ambassador and the US public about what is coming next. Just when the US needs Russia the most, it has pushed Russia to the lap of the Chinese communists.

Constant provocation by the US of the Russians could have been avoided had NATO expansion stopped before the 1990s. Putin still demands a neutral status for Ukraine, but the West does not respect Putin’s words. The Ukrainian president, Zelensky, has recently intimidated about the talks of a neutral status of Ukraine with Russia and Putin has agreed to sit on the table for that. Why not before?

In 2013, Putin went to the EU with the proposal of making Ukraine a buffer state and the EU foolishly said no. Putin decided from then on to wreck Ukraine so that the West cannot have it. And today the complete wreckage of that country has begun, just because the US did not say yes to the rational demands of the Russian oligarch.

The hard reality is that humanitarian calls and morality take a back seat when politics is involved. No amount of humanitarian appeals would stop Putin from destroying Ukraine, just like a million lives lost in Iraq did not stop the US and its allies to stop their wreckage of Iraq. Media play an important part to bring about the humanitarian crises that unfold during the war, but that is also sadly part of politics and propaganda. The only way we can accept this suffering is to actually do something about it as much as it is in our agentic power to do and hope that innocent people stay safe.