XPost: soc.culture.russian, soc.rights.human, talk.politics.misc   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Chomsky: US Approach to Ukraine and Russia Has “Left the Domain of   
   Rational Discourse”   
      
   he Russia-Ukraine crisis continues unabated as the United States   
   ignores all of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s security demands and   
   spreads a frenzy of fear by claiming that a Russian invasion of   
   Ukraine is imminent.   
      
   In a new exclusive interview for Truthout on the ongoing   
   Russia-Ukraine crisis, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky   
   outlines the deadly dangers of U.S. intransigence over Ukrainian   
   membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even when   
   key Western allies have already vetoed earlier U.S. efforts in that   
   direction. He also seeks to shed some light on the reasons why   
   Republicans today seem to be divided on Russia.   
      
   Chomsky — whose intellectual contributions have been compared to those   
   of Galileo, Newton and Descartes — has had tremendous influence on a   
   variety of areas of scholarly and scientific inquiry, including   
   linguistics, logic and mathematics, computer science, psychology,   
   media studies, philosophy, politics and international affairs. He is   
   the author of some 150 books and recipient of scores of highly   
   prestigious awards including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto   
   Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), as well as dozens of   
   honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned   
   universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the   
   Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently Laureate Professor   
   at the University of Arizona.   
      
   The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and   
   clarity.   
      
   C.J. Polychroniou: Tensions continue to escalate between Russia and   
   Ukraine, and there is little room for optimism since the U.S. offer   
   for de-escalation fails to meet any of Russia’s security demands. As   
   such, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the Russia-Ukraine   
   border crisis stems in reality from the U.S.’s intransigent position   
   over Ukrainian membership in NATO? In the same context, is it hard to   
   imagine what might have been Washington’s response to the hypothetical   
   event that Mexico wanted to join a Moscow-driven military alliance?   
      
   Noam Chomsky: We hardly need to linger on the latter question. No   
   country would dare to make such a move in what former President   
   Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson called “Our   
   little region over here,” when he was condemning all spheres of   
   influence (except for our own — which in reality, is hardly limited to   
   the Western hemisphere). Secretary of State Antony Blinken is no less   
   adamant today in condemning Russia’s claim to a “sphere of influence,”   
   a concept we firmly reject (with the same reservation).   
      
   There was of course one famous case when a country in our little   
   region came close to a military alliance with Russia, the 1962 missile   
   crisis. The circumstances, however, were quite unlike Ukraine.   
   President John F. Kennedy was escalating his terrorist war against   
   Cuba to a threat of invasion; Ukraine, in sharp contrast, faces   
   threats as a result of its potentially joining a hostile military   
   alliance. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s reckless decision to   
   provide Cuba with missiles was also an effort to slightly rectify the   
   enormous U.S. preponderance of military force after JFK had responded   
   to Khrushchev’s offer of mutual reduction of offensive weapons with   
   the largest military buildup in peacetime history, though the U.S. was   
   already far ahead. We know what that led to.   
      
   The tensions over Ukraine are extremely severe, with Russia’s   
   concentration of military forces at Ukraine’s borders. The Russian   
   position has been quite explicit for some time. It was stated clearly   
   by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at his press conference at the   
   United Nations: “The main issue is our clear position on the   
   inadmissibility of further expansion of NATO to the East and the   
   deployment of strike weapons that could threaten the territory of the   
   Russian Federation.” Much the same was reiterated shortly after by   
   Putin, as he had often said before.   
   Historian Richard Sakwa … observed that “NATO’s existence became   
   justified by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement” —   
   a plausible judgment.   
      
   There is a simple way to deal with deployment of weapons: Don’t deploy   
   them. There is no justification for doing so. The U.S. may claim that   
   they are defensive, but Russia surely doesn’t see it that way, and   
   with reason.   
      
   The question of further expansion is more complex. The issue goes back   
   over 30 years, to when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was   
   collapsing. There were extensive negotiations among Russia, the U.S.   
   and Germany. (The core issue was German unification.) Two visions were   
   presented. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a Eurasian   
   security system from Lisbon to Vladivostok with no military blocs. The   
   U.S. rejected it: NATO stays, Russia’s Warsaw Pact disappears.   
      
   For obvious reasons, German reunification within a hostile military   
   alliance is no small matter for Russia. Nevertheless, Gorbachev agreed   
   to it, with a quid pro quo: No expansion to the East. President George   
   H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed. In their words to   
   Gorbachev: “Not only for the Soviet Union but for other European   
   countries as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the   
   United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of   
   NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread   
   in an eastern direction.”   
      
   “East” meant East Germany. No one had a thought about anything beyond,   
   at least in public. That’s agreed on all sides. German leaders were   
   even more explicit about it. They were overjoyed just to have Russian   
   agreement to unification, and the last thing they wanted was new   
   problems.   
      
   There is extensive scholarship on the matter — Mary Sarotte, Joshua   
   Shifrinson, and others, debating exactly who said what, what they   
   meant, what’s its status, and so on. It is interesting and   
   illuminating work, but what it comes down to, when the dust settles,   
   is what I quoted from the declassified record.   
      
   President H.W. Bush pretty much lived up to these commitments. So did   
   President Bill Clinton at first, until 1999, the 50th anniversary of   
   NATO; with an eye on the Polish vote in the upcoming election, some   
   have speculated. He admitted Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to   
      
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