XPost: alt.fan.noam-chomsky, talk.politics.misc, soc.rights.human   
   XPost: alt.politics.religion, alt.anti-war   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   June 28, 2022   
      
   ‘Not a Justification but a Provocation’: Chomsky on the Root Causes of   
   the Russia Ukraine War   
   by Ramzy Baroud   
      
   One of the reasons that Russian media has been completely blocked in   
   the West, along with the unprecedented control and censorship over the   
   Ukraine war narrative, is the fact that western governments simply do   
   not want their public to know that the world is vastly changing.   
      
   Ignorance might be bliss, arguably in some situations, but not in this   
   case. Here, ignorance can be catastrophic as western audiences are   
   denied access to information about a critical situation that is   
   affecting them in profound ways and will most certainly impact the   
   world’s geopolitics for generations to come.   
      
   The growing inflation, an imminent global recession, a festering   
   refugee crisis, a deepening food shortage crisis and much more are the   
   kinds of challenges that require open and transparent discussions   
   regarding the situation in Ukraine, the NATO-Russia rivalry and the   
   responsibility of the West in the ongoing war.   
      
   To discuss these issues, along with the missing context of the   
   Russia-Ukraine war, we spoke with Professor Noam Chomsky, believed to   
   be the greatest living intellectual of our time.   
      
   Chomsky told us that it “should be clear that the (Russian) invasion   
   of Ukraine has no (moral) justification.” He compared it to the US   
   invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an example of “supreme international   
   crime.” With this moral question settled, Chomsky believes that the   
   main ‘background’ of this war, a factor that is missing in mainstream   
   media coverage, is “NATO expansion”.   
      
   “This is not just my opinion,” said Chomsky, “it is the opinion of   
   every high-level US official in the diplomatic services who has any   
   familiarity with Russia and Eastern Europe. This goes back to George   
   Kennan and, in the 1990s, Reagan’s ambassador Jack Matlock, including   
   the current director of the CIA; in fact, just everybody who knows   
   anything has been warning Washington that it is reckless and   
   provocative to ignore Russia’s very clear and explicit red lines. That   
   goes way before (Vladimir) Putin, it has nothing to do with him;   
   (Mikhail) Gorbachev, all said the same thing. Ukraine and Georgia   
   cannot join NATO, this is the geostrategic heartland of Russia.”   
      
   Though various US administrations acknowledged and, to some extent,   
   respected the Russian red lines, the Bill Clinton Administration did   
   not. According to Chomsky, “George H. W. Bush … made an explicit   
   promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond East Germany,   
   perfectly explicit. You can look up the documents. It’s very clear.   
   Bush lived up to it. But when Clinton came along, he started violating   
   it. And he gave reasons. He explained that he had to do it for   
   domestic political reasons. He had to get the Polish vote, the ethnic   
   vote. So, he would let the so-called Visegrad countries into NATO.   
   Russia accepted it, didn’t like it but accepted it.”   
      
   “The second George Bush,” Chomsky argued, “just threw the door wide   
   open. In fact, even invited Ukraine to join over, despite the   
   objections of everyone in the top diplomatic service, apart from his   
   own little clique, Cheney, Rumsfeld (among others). But France and   
   Germany vetoed it.”   
      
   However, that was hardly the end of the discussion. Ukraine’s NATO   
   membership remained on the agenda because of intense pressures from   
   Washington.   
      
   “Starting in 2014, after the Maidan uprising, the United States began   
   openly, not secretly, moving to integrate Ukraine into the NATO   
   military command, sending heavy armaments and joining military   
   exercises, military training and it was not a secret. They boasted   
   about it,” Chomsky said.   
      
   What is interesting is that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr   
   Zelensky “was elected on a peace platform, to implement what was   
   called Minsk Two, some kind of autonomy for the eastern region. He   
   tried to implement it. He was warned by right-wing militias that if he   
   persisted, they’d kill him. Well, he didn’t get any support from the   
   United States. If the United States had supported him, he could have   
   continued, we might have avoided all of this. The United States was   
   committed to the integration of Ukraine within NATO.”   
      
   The Joe Biden Administration carried on with the policy of NATO   
   expansion. “Just before the invasion,” said Chomsky, “Biden … produced   
   a joint statement … calling for expanding these efforts of   
   integration. That’s part of what was called an ‘enhanced program’   
   leading to the mission of NATO. In November, it was moved forward to a   
   charter, signed by the Secretary of State.”   
      
   Soon after the war, “the United States Department acknowledged that   
   they had not taken Russian security concerns into consideration in any   
   discussions with Russia. The question of NATO, they would not discuss.   
   Well, all of that is provocation. Not a justification but a   
   provocation and it’s quite interesting that in American discourse, it   
   is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the ‘unprovoked   
   invasion of Ukraine’. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of   
   thousands of hits.”   
      
   Chomsky continued, “Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they   
   wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion. By now,   
   censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond   
   anything in my lifetime. Such a level that you are not permitted to   
   read the Russian position. Literally. Americans are not allowed to   
   know what the Russians are saying. Except, selected things. So, if   
   Putin makes a speech to Russians with all kinds of outlandish claims   
   about Peter the Great and so on, then, you see it on the front pages.   
   If the Russians make an offer for a negotiation, you can’t find it.   
   That’s suppressed. You’re not allowed to know what they are saying. I   
   have never seen a level of censorship like this.”   
      
   Regarding his views of the possible future scenarios, Chomsky said   
   that “the war will end, either through diplomacy or not. That’s just   
   logic. Well, if diplomacy has a meaning, it means both sides can   
   tolerate it. They don’t like it, but they can tolerate it. They don’t   
   get anything they want, they get something. That’s diplomacy. If you   
   reject diplomacy, you are saying: ‘Let the war go on with all of its   
   horrors, with all the destruction of Ukraine, and let’s let it go on   
   until we get what we want.’”   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)