How the West Brought War to Ukraine

How did the West bring war to Ukraine? The answer may surprise you...
...it's NATO expansion. It's always been NATO expansion.

This is more of an extended article than a book. The audiobook is only an hour long. So very easy to consume if you're interested in the subject. I think it was really detailed while still being brief.


Here's my book report...

Let me make something perfectly clear from the jump. Regarding this conflict,
• I do not support the government of Russia,
• I do not support NATO or the US Government,
• I do not support the government of Ukraine.

The US populace has never been known as a people who knows their history, or having a basic understanding of the actions of their government. But let's break this down as simply as possible
• WW2 is won on the backs of millions of Soviet soldiers overwhelming and defeating the Germans.
• Stalin expects to be folded into the new world order alongside its fellow superpower, the US Empire.
• The US Empire is ruled by Capitalists who would rather betray their allies than dare surrender another dime of profits to the working class. Normalizing relations with the USSR would normalize the concept of worker-controlled enterprise. Cue the Cold War.
• NATO is created, does a lot of coups around the world.
• 1962, NATO installs missiles in Turkey, right at the Soviet front door. The USSR, in kind, installs missiles in Cuba. The US comes minutes away from nuclear Armageddon. Then every makes a deal to withdraw the Cuban missiles in exchange for the Turkey missiles. Crisis averted.
• Yada Yada Yada
• 1990, The Soviet Union collapses. US & European enterprise pick to the bone all social programs in the former soviet states, resulting in a crashing of life expectancy and other health indicators. For some strange reason, a large % of people surveyed in these countries wished it never collapsed. Huh. Weird.
• The Russian Government, AFTER losing the Cold War, thinks it'll FINALLY be folded into the now unipolar world order.
• Instead, the US and NATO continue to provoke Russia with NATO expansion. The purpose of NATO has always been to fight Russia. Always. Its expansion is a clear and present danger for the existence of the Russian state. The Russian government understands this clearly.

• “According to an analysis by the National Security Archive of George Washington University, where relevant declassified documents are posted, ‘a cascade of assurances about Soviet security [were] given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991.' These assurances pertained not only to the question of NATO's expansion into East Germany, as is sometimes asserted, but also to the expansion of NATO into the countries of Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, within a few years, NATO began to expand toward Russia's border. Although the assurances had not been instantiated in formal treaties, ‘subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion' were not simply Russian propaganda but, rather, were ‘founded in written contemporaneous [memoranda] at the highest levels' of Western governments.

• So we lied to them saying that their existence was secured since NATO would not expand. But NATO expanded anyway. Golly I wonder why Russia doesn't trust us. Putin must be paranoid, that's it. Only logical explanation.

• 1999 NATO brings in Poland among other countries. “In a recent interview, Army Colonel (retired) Douglas Macgregor, Ph.D., a storied Iraq commander who helped develop U.S. war plans for Europe, commented on the admission of one of these countries: ‘[W]hen we decided in 1999 to bring in Poland...[t]he Russians were very worried—not so much because NATO was hostile at the time but because they knew that Poland was. Poland has a long history of hostility toward Russia.... Poland is, if anything, at this point in time, a potential catalyst for war with Russia.'”

• 2001, GWBush withdraws the US from the Antiballistic Missle Treaty with Russia. This is seen as yet another western provocation. Treaties help prevent war. Withdrawing from them helps antagonize and goad toward war.

• 2004, “NATO admitted additional East European countries, including Romania and Estonia, the latter of which borders on Russia. By this point, NATO had expanded close to a thousand miles toward Russia.” This is more provocation.

• 2008, at a NATO summit, NATO announced its intentions to admit Ukraine and Georgia as members. Both countries border Russia. “Although European members of NATO had serious reservations, the administration of President George W. Bush used the position of the United States as senior member of the alliance to push the issue, and the following unequivocal statement was included in the memorandum: ‘We agreed today that these countries [Ukraine and Georgia] will become members of NATO.'”

George W. Bush is one of the key players at fault for the war in Ukraine. This is a red line for Russia. an unacceptable scenario for the very existence and autonomy of their country.

• 2008, In an official cable from the then-U.S. ambassador to Russia (William J. Burns headlined “Nyet Means Nyet [No Means No]: Russia's NATO Enlargement Redlines.” and read: “Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.”

• 2008, Georgia
• “United States led a 2,000-man military exercise inside Georgia.”
• Days later, Georgia “launched a massive, fourteen-hour artillery and rocket assault on a semi-autonomous Georgian district (South Ossetia). That district borders on Russia and has close ties to it.”
• In response, Russia invades Georgia, fighting against soldiers armed and trained by the US.
• The US Media called it “an unprovoked invasion.” Did i say “media”? I meant “consent manufacturers”
• Colonel Macgregor explains: “The Russians ultimately intervened in Georgia, and the whole purpose of that intervention was to signal to us [the United States] that they would not tolerate a NATO member on their borders, particularly a member that was hostile to them, as at the time the Georgian Government was. So, I think what we're dealing with now [the war in Ukraine] is exactly the outcome that Ambassador Burns feared when he said ‘no means no.'”

• In 2014, the US government backed a coup in Ukraine. Why? The same reason why the US has been backing coups for 100+ years: more money for investors. Open the markets to more effectively drain the wealth of the target country. The US succeeded in installing a pro-west government in a country that borders Russia.

• In response to the 2014 US-backed coup, Russia annexed Crimea to prevent Ukraine from blocking access to “its vital warm-water naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea—access to which Russia had previously negotiated....”

• After the annexation of Crimea, “the U.S. began a massive program of military aid to Ukraine. According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, a partial accounting since 2014, not including most of the military aid initiated since the 2022 war began, amounts to over four billion dollars, most coming through the State Department and Department of Defense.”
This was essentially a way to unofficially bring Ukraine into NATO. They wanted to “improve interoperability with NATO” even though Ukraine wasn't in NATO (yet).

• 2016, The US installs a an anti-ballistic missile [ABM] system in Romania. “Though ostensibly defensive, the ABM system uses the Mark-41 ‘Aegis' missile launchers, which can accommodate a variety of missile types: not just ABMs, designed to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, but also—crucially—nuclear-tipped offensive weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile.” Wow. Missile sites at the Russian border. Where have I heard this before?? Surely this won't be seen as provocative, right???

“The American response to Mr. Putin's concerns about the ABM sites has been to assert that the United States does not intend to configure the launchers for offensive use. But this response requires the Russians to trust America's stated intentions, even in a crisis, rather than to judge the threat by the potential of the systems”

• 2017, The US begins selling lethal weapons to Ukraine, a change to a 2014 policy that only non-lethal items were sold (like body armor).

• 2019, “the United States unilaterally withdrew from the 1987 treaty on intermediate-range nuclear weapons.” They claimed the Russians were cheating, but “the key point is that the United States withdrew unilaterally rather than aggressively seeking to resolve the issues. In deciding to do so, the Americans may have sensed a military advantage, because the missiles in question would be placed in Europe, close to Russia, whereas Russia did not have plans to place weapons at equivalent distances from the United States”

• 2021, “Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries. Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its territorial waters.”

That's it. That's the road to war. Was it all “Russian Aggression?” is “Putin crazy?” And “as bad as Hitler?” I don't think so. I think if you back someone into a corner, they lash out. You back Russia into a corner, they lash out. Do I support this war? No. Do I support Russia? No. But I can see where they're coming from.

Imagine if you will if the shoe were on the other foot. What if the USSR overthrew the government of Canada or Mexico to install a puppet government for them to control? Would the US sit idly by? Of course not, they'd invade immediately. Would the media frame this as “unprovoked US aggression?” Of course not. It'd be called “liberating the people from the new tyrannical government” or the US media would be completely silent on the matter.
And yet somehow “freethinking bleeding heart dove liberals” don't seem to grasp what's happening here. They immediately fall into the same trap every time: “US good. US enemies bad”.

The key takeaway is that we need to understand our history or else we'll keep getting dragged into one bullshit conflict after another.

What's the resolution here?
• Ukraine is in NATO, their economy gets destroyed by more corporate ghouls as well as the US wanting to get some of the money back that it lent to em. (Most probable)
• Russia takes over all of Ukraine and absorbs it into Russia or some new confederation (least probable)
• Ukraine and the US sue for peace and sign a treaty saying Ukraine will NOT join NATO ever. (2nd-least probable but what I think would be most ideal)