Acknowledging history and the failures of our political establishment doesn’t mean you’re a Putin apologist. I lived this era, starting my military career in 1980 and ending it after multiple Iraq/Afghanistan deployments. I’m now extremely skeptical of the competence and motivations of our political & military establishment but that doesn’t make me a Putin apologist.
After the disintegration of the USSR I read countless prognostications on the relevance of NATO and whether it was still needed. I heard multiple US & NATO leaders promise that NATO wouldn’t expand East-and I saw those promises repeatedly broken. No one cared at the time because Russia was on the ropes and couldn’t do anything except complain.
Then 911 gave NATO a new reason for existence. All our allies jumped in to help us destroy the Taliban and bring democracy to Afghanistan. For 20 years the money flowed, flag draped coffins returned to Europe/US and tens of thousands of Afghanis held their own funerals.
Throughout the Afghan enterprise Russia helped us with intel, overflight rights, contractors and the use of former USSR airbases. But then the US/NATO establishment went bat-shiite crazy with the Democrat’s collusion lie. Russia knew this was a lie but they saw the whole US/Europe establishment go crazy with anti Russian hysteria.
The foundation of defense & foreign policy is “know your enemy”. In Russia’s case, they’ve suffered multiple invasions from Western Europe including Napoleon and Hitler. They have a well founded paranoia of NATO expansion.
That paranoia was accentuated when the Obama admin sponsored the 2014 Ukrainian coup against a democratically elected president they viewed as too pro-Russian. Then they watched as the Obama admin put CIA & special forces in Ukraine on Russia’s border just 250 miles from Moscow.
Then the Biden admin completely ignored any attempt to “know your enemy” to avoid war and publicly support NATO membership for Ukraine. This action forced Russian action to secure their security sphere. In the real world of realpolitik, nations act to secure their security, our establishment failed to foresee this fact.
6 months after NATO was ignominiously booted out of Afghanistan, the found a new holy cause to keep military/industrial complex money flowing-Ukraine. The cubicle commandos unanimously declared we have to pay any cost to defend Ukraine & defeat Russia. They conveniently forgot our humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, our NATO debacle in Libya and our US debacle in Iraq.
As for me, I’ll never support another US or NATO war until there’s accountability for the past 25 years of military debacles and failure. My country comes before Ukraine or any other.
It is indeed fascinating to see Niall Feguson once again notice the leftward drift of a major commentator. Jeff Sachs has been in search of a media for many years, and successfully drifted from one to another while shifting further and further to the left. I noticed it in and about the same time as Niall. I offer my thanks to him once more for his astute and human observations throughout this article. His personal family insights add even more of to the stature of a truly great historian.
Acknowledging history and the failures of our political establishment doesn’t mean you’re a Putin apologist. I lived this era, starting my military career in 1980 and ending it after multiple Iraq/Afghanistan deployments. I’m now extremely skeptical of the competence and motivations of our political & military establishment but that doesn’t make me a Putin apologist.
After the disintegration of the USSR I read countless prognostications on the relevance of NATO and whether it was still needed. I heard multiple US & NATO leaders promise that NATO wouldn’t expand East-and I saw those promises repeatedly broken. No one cared at the time because Russia was on the ropes and couldn’t do anything except complain.
Then 911 gave NATO a new reason for existence. All our allies jumped in to help us destroy the Taliban and bring democracy to Afghanistan. For 20 years the money flowed, flag draped coffins returned to Europe/US and tens of thousands of Afghanis held their own funerals.
Throughout the Afghan enterprise Russia helped us with intel, overflight rights, contractors and the use of former USSR airbases. But then the US/NATO establishment went bat-shiite crazy with the Democrat’s collusion lie. Russia knew this was a lie but they saw the whole US/Europe establishment go crazy with anti Russian hysteria.
The foundation of defense & foreign policy is “know your enemy”. In Russia’s case, they’ve suffered multiple invasions from Western Europe including Napoleon and Hitler. They have a well founded paranoia of NATO expansion.
That paranoia was accentuated when the Obama admin sponsored the 2014 Ukrainian coup against a democratically elected president they viewed as too pro-Russian. Then they watched as the Obama admin put CIA & special forces in Ukraine on Russia’s border just 250 miles from Moscow.
Then the Biden admin completely ignored any attempt to “know your enemy” to avoid war and publicly support NATO membership for Ukraine. This action forced Russian action to secure their security sphere. In the real world of realpolitik, nations act to secure their security, our establishment failed to foresee this fact.
6 months after NATO was ignominiously booted out of Afghanistan, the found a new holy cause to keep military/industrial complex money flowing-Ukraine. The cubicle commandos unanimously declared we have to pay any cost to defend Ukraine & defeat Russia. They conveniently forgot our humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, our NATO debacle in Libya and our US debacle in Iraq.
As for me, I’ll never support another US or NATO war until there’s accountability for the past 25 years of military debacles and failure. My country comes before Ukraine or any other.
It is indeed fascinating to see Niall Feguson once again notice the leftward drift of a major commentator. Jeff Sachs has been in search of a media for many years, and successfully drifted from one to another while shifting further and further to the left. I noticed it in and about the same time as Niall. I offer my thanks to him once more for his astute and human observations throughout this article. His personal family insights add even more of to the stature of a truly great historian.
Very enjoyable. I see Hume’s History is available on Apple Books for £1.99…