James W. Pfister: U.S. motivation in Ukraine

More sophisticated weapons, equipment and money are going to Ukraine. What is the motivation of the United States to financially and militarily support the Ukrainian defense against the Russian invasion peripheral to Russia?

Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter states: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state….” Russia has violated that principle. Is the U.S. motivation to defend Ukraine merely a moral or legal one to enforce Article 2(4), or is there more? Given the price we are paying, my thesis is that there must be more.

On Jan. 7, 2023, in The Washington Post, Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates, former secretaries of state and defense, respectively, state that Putin’s motivation to invade was offensive: “He believes it is his historical destiny — his messianic mission — to reestablish the Russian Empire and, as Zbigniew Brzezinski observed years ago, there can be no Russian Empire without Ukraine.” Others believe Putin’s motive was defensive, as a reaction to NATO’s eastward expansion and the refusal of the U.S. and NATO to preempt Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO.

The defensive motive goes back at least to the Clinton Administration. On May 10, 1995, in a one-on-one meeting between presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin emotionally stated: “…for me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding toward those of Russia — that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people.” (The William J. Clinton Presidential Library). The U.S. responded with NATO expansion in disregard of Russia’s sensitivities. We overlooked our own sensitivities which caused the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

According to Noam Chomsky in “How the West Brought War to Ukraine,” 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader, “…was subjected to repeated visits by leading American politicians and State Department officials, all of whom spouted a theoretical principle of absolute Ukrainian freedom, defined as the ‘right’ to join NATO and establish a U.S. military outpost on Russia’s border.” Chomsky indicates that if Zelenskyy had simply said that Ukraine will not join NATO we would not have war today. In January 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg rejected Putin’s demand that NATO not admit new members near Russia’s borders. Instead, we have armed Ukraine beginning with the Obama Administration, according to Christopher Caldwell, New York Times, May 31, 2022. The Bidens, father and son, were in Ukraine. To what end?

Putin had shown aggressive strength in the recent past: 2008 in Georgia, 2014 in Donbas and Crimea, and 2015 in Syria, supporting Bashar al-Assad against the American position. Did we want to weaken him?

I believe the motivation of the U.S. has been to defeat Putin, to weaken him politically (domestically and internationally) and militarily. Rice and Gates, cited above, wrote that leaving Russian forces in a strong position from a negotiated cease-fire “is unacceptable.” They draw a connection between Russian aggression and U.S. security: “…the United States has learned the hard way — in 1914, 1941, and 2001 — that unprovoked aggression and attacks on the rule of law and international order cannot be ignored.”

The refusal of the U.S. to recognize the reasonable security concerns of Russia means that Russian aggression was not unprovoked, just as our putting out a blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis was not unprovoked. Rice and Gates say that the way to avoid a confrontation between the United States and Russia “…is to help Ukraine push back the invader now.” That is, it is in our security interest to defeat Russia.

Thus, the U.S. support of Ukraine is more than moral and legal support based on said Article 2(4). U.S. action is based on self-interest: to defeat Putin, to allow NATO expansion and to promote democracy. Also, are we testing weapons and equipment, our training in their use and the logistics of their supply? Our behavior is consistent with the long-held American strategy of forward defense and the promotion of democracy. To me, this forward strategy and promotion of democracy are not consistent with the development of a new world order of peace and mutual prosperity with China and Russia.

James W. Pfister, J.D. University of Toledo, Ph.D. University of Michigan (political science), retired after 46 years in the Political Science Department at Eastern Michigan University. He lives at Devils Lake and can be reached at jpfister@emich.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: James W. Pfister: U.S. motivation in Ukraine