NATO’s War on Russia: Part II

Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan recently posted an interesting YouTube video entitled “Ukraine War Q&A Series: Who Really Started This Whole Thing?” In the video Zeihan effectively (IMO) undermines the position bandied about by some that it is the aggressive expansion of US led NATO after the Cold War that forced Putin to invade Ukraine.

Zeihan points out that a country seeking to join NATO must first fulfill a number of not insignificant requirements. First, an applicant country has to pass an act of parliament stating that it seeks membership in NATO and then submit a preliminary application for membership. Next, each member NATO country has to approve the preliminary application. Next, the applicant country must upgrade its military to NATO standards as well as undergo civil and democratic reform. Finally, once these reforms are enacted the applicant country submits a report card along with a formal application, which typically requires another act of parliament by the applicant country, followed by a final approval of each NATO member. Accordingly, expansion of NATO is not something that the US or NATO can do on a whim. It requires the express application and enactment of reforms by the applicant country as well as the express approval of all member NATO countries.

Zeihan further points out that all of the countries that joined or have sought to join NATO since the end of the Cold War have at one time either been at war with or occupied by Russia. Many of the countries (e.g. Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia in 2008) have been recently threatened and invaded. Many probably have vivid memories of how the standard of living suffered under Russian / Soviet dominance and have no desire to return to that condition. Accordingly, the notion that these applicant countries were somehow strong-armed into joining NATO in order to antagonize Russia (rather than voluntarily joined for their own protection from Russia) appears to be highly suspect.

All this brings up another topic related to the extremist notion of the mainstream media myth. That is, if a news source is biased then nothing it reports can be trusted. I suspect the real reason for this argument is so that no agreed truth can be established thus freeing each extreme side (the left and the right woke) to believe what it wants to believe (in any realm including politics and religion).

But this of course cuts both ways. I could say those people who support Russia and the mainstream media myth are unduly biased against the US and the Western Liberal Tradition and therefore cannot be trusted to report truth either. As such, when they complain about “NATO’s war on Russia” it can be shrugged off as right woke propaganda. When they say the Parable of the Good Samaritan should actually be interpret to allow a Christian to hate his neighbor, that too can be shrugged off as right woke propaganda. Sanity is orthogonal to the extreme views of the left and right woke. Moderate Liberalism holds truth does exist and therefore there is common ground where people of different opinions can come to an agreement.

Peter Zeihan on Demographics in the Orthodox World

In a recently released YouTube video, Peter Zeihan talks about the demographics of the Orthodox Christian world which he defines as geographically containing Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. Essentially, he is talking about the former communist states within the Orthodox Christian world. Zeihan observes that this part of the world is suffering from a large scale demographic collapse which he asserts is largely the result of three trends.

The first trend is the broad economic dislocation the Orthodox Christian world experience in the 20th century which negatively impacted their demographics. This economic dislocation resulted from the economic mismanagement under communist regimes which created a lower quality of life and prosperity in this area than it would have otherwise experienced. Poor people in an urbanized, industrialized world have less children because children make life more expensive. This is in contrast to an agrarian economy where children are economically advantageous as essentially free labor when they are young and a retirement plan for the parents when they grow old. The second trend is vast immigration from the Orthodox Christian World to Western Europe and North America. Many people who had the means to immigrate out of this economically dysfunctional area did so. Many women did so by entering the sex trade do to poor education. The third trend Zeihan talks about is the use of abortion as the primary method of birth control. Because of the long term impact of these three trends Zeihan asserts these countries will likely never repopulate themselves.

Zeihan observes Russians specifically experienced series of stacked political disasters that contributed to its current situation. World War I, World War II, the famine under Stalin, the economic mismanagement under Brezhnev and Khrushchev, and the post Cold War economic collapse all created economic dislocation and contributed to making the current generation the smallest one on record. As such, Zeihan asserts, the current war in Ukraine will be the last war that Russia will ever fight. Moreover, says Zeihan, even if the Ukrainians emerge victorious over the Russians, their ethnicity will vanish over the next 20 to 30 years followed by the Russian ethnicity 20 to 30 years after that.

All of this begs the question as to what are Vladimir Putin’s motives? Why would he seek territorial expansion in the face of this demographic collapse of ethnic Russians? If it is (as Zeihan has previously argued) to shore up the defense of the Russian geography, will he have the manpower to do conquer the land in the first place and to secure it in the second? Is it to add the population of Ukraine to Russia? If so, the would the loss of Ukrainians and Russians in the conflict not cancel out any gains in population? Perhaps it is the last gasp of a dying ethnicity, one that is not dying because of a NATO war on Russia, but rather because of mismanagement and misfortune.

Territorial Alteration

JMSmith of the Orthosphere points out in his OP “Bad Books: PLEZ Section 2,” that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion puts forth the idea that modern wars should not be wars of “territorial alteration.” That is, according to international law no country should annex the territory of another nation. Indeed, this international understanding has been the norm certainly since World War II. I take JMSmith’s point to be that the outlawing of the annexation of territory from a weak country by a stronger country is a “liberal” and therefore evil proposition and that it is right and just for a strong country to take the territory of a weak country. But I suppose for some reason, it is not right and just for an even stronger country to protect the weak country from the strong country.

Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan makes the argument that the reason Russia has invaded Ukraine to regain control of it’s natural defensive frontiers. That is, the invasion of Ukraine was to extend it’s boundaries to the Carpathian mountains and then plug up the invasion route between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea with a military presence. To do this, would require Russia to conquer all of Ukraine, Moldova and part of Romania. This is only one of several invasion routes that would have to be regained. The others would require the annexation (or control of) essentially the entire former Soviet Union which would require the invasion of many other now independent nations. Certainly, Russia has a historical basis for this strategy, having been invaded throughout its history most notably by the Mongols, Sweden, France and Germany twice.

All these invasions took place prior to the modern liberal notion that it is against international law for a strong country to take and annex territory from a weaker country. Now, it has been argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is actually a result of NATO’s war on Russia and that (I suppose) Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine did not seek alignment with the West. If we are to believe Peter Zeihan, Russia would have invaded Ukraine or sought to militarily and politically dominate it in any case. But if we are to believe the principle of international law (and I suppose, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), that NATO (a defensive alliance) would not seek to invade Russia and annex its territory, then there would be no need for Russia to invade Ukraine.

So I suppose the question is, if the Protocols are true, then why would Russia (or those who believe in the authenticity of the Protocols) fear Ukrainian alignment with the West enough to justify a Russian invasion?

NATO War on Russia?

I have seen many conservatives frame Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “NATO’s war on Russia“. The general flow of the argument seems to be after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US specifically and the West in general should have done more to integrate the former Soviet sphere of influence in the the international system. Instead, the West antagonized Russia by expanding NATO which forced it into its current aggression. This argument seems to go along with the ultra conservative sentiment that the US lead global order is evil and must be defeated by the forces of traditionalism regardless of their despicability. The acceptance of Donald Trump to lead the conservative moral crusade in the US despite his moral flaws is a good example of this trend and how it employs strained logic to reach its conclusions.

Russia and its supporters typically employ three main arguments. First, they argue that NATO expansion into the former Soviet sphere of influence is per se aggression against Russia. Second, they argue that the West has been hostile towards Russia since 1991. And third, they argue that Ukraine is not a real country and therefore Russia was justified in its invasion. Stephen Kotikin, a historian specializing in Russia with a focus on Stalin and the Soviet Union provides convincing counters to these arguments in an episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast released in May of 2022. The following is a brief summary of these counter arguments for the edification of my readers.

NATO Expansion is Per Se Aggression Against Russia

Russia and those who support Russia often argue that NATO expansion into the former Soviet sphere of influence constitutes aggression against Russia. However, Kotkin points out that NATO is a voluntary organization. Nations have to apply for membership and are not coerced into membership as were the members of the Warsaw Pact alliance (for example). In many cases NATO has been reluctant to grant membership to new applicants out of concern for antagonizing Russia’s. NATO is also a defensive alliance that can only attack once one of its members has been attacked per its charter. Moreover, most of the members of NATO are pacifist countries. All of these facts undermine the claim that NATO expansion is per se aggression against Russia.

The West has been Hostile to Russia Since 1991

Similarly, Russia and those who support Russia argue that the West should have tried to befriend Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union rather than take advantage of their weakness by expanding into their sphere of influence. But this argument (Plotkin points out) is false on its face. George H.W. Bush made efforts to keep the USSR from collapsing. Bill Clinton sent billions of dollars to Russia during his administration to support the Yeltsin regime. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both tried to “reset” relations after set backs. Donald Trump (bizarrely at times) seemed to bend over backwards to appease Vladimir Putin and deny reports of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election.

Beyond the US, other Western countries made peaceful overtures of integration to Russia after 1991. Germany voluntarily increased its dependence on Russian energy. Britain facilitated the money laundering of Russian oligarchs’ ill gotten wealth. France on numerous occasions tried to appease Putin when he complained about Western aggression and unfair treatment.

Since 1991 Russia has largely gone unpunished for its violations of international law. Notable violations include the poisoning of Russian dissidents on foreign soil, the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, interference in the 2016 US Presidential election and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Despite all these overtures and failing to punish Russia for bad acts on the international stage, the Putin administration has consistently claimed Western hostility towards it and used this claim of hostility to justify his aggression towards Russia’s neighbors.

Ukraine is not a Real Nation and Deserved Russian Invasion

I have seen arguments to the effect that Ukraine is not a real nation, historically a part of Russia and therefore Russia was justified in its invasion. Russia may see its invasion of Ukraine as justified on existential grounds. Peter Zeihan (a geopolitical strategist) has posted quite a bit of content on this subject. In a 2017 YouTube video he predicted the current invasion of Ukraine motivated by a collapsing demographic of draft age men and a desire to plug potential invasion access points. Of course this is not the reason promulgated by the Russians or those who support Russia. Their argument (Plotkin argues) is more of a “blame the rape victim” type argument, along the lines of Russia is naturally aggressive and Ukraine is (alluringly) not a real nation. Anecdotally, the Ukrainians I know think of Ukraine as a nation distinct from Russia. Moreover, if Ukraine was not a nation with its own identity before the invasion, the invasion itself seems to have formed it into a nation and given it a distinct identity.

Final Thoughts

Plotkin makes the case that Russia thinks of itself as a world power but it has not been a world power since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is also resentful of the West and the US in particular for Russia’s defeat in the Cold War and the West’s current dominance. Resentment (or perhaps shame) is indeed a strong emotion and can cause a nation (or a person) to justify acts and beliefs that would not otherwise be justified or even believable. Of course this warning goes to both the resentful and the resented.