Apparently (according to the Wall Street Journal), on February 19th of this year, Germany's Olaf Scholz offered Ukrainian President Zelensky a deal whereby in return for renouncing the Ukraine's aspirations for NATO membership, a peace deal, signed by both Biden and Putin would guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty. Zelensky rejected this offer, saying that Putin could not be trusted.
Of course, according to Article Ten of the NATO Treaty, unanimous consent of all NATO members is required before a new state may join the alliance:
Article 10
The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.
So Germany (or Canada for that matter) could have put the kibosh on the Ukraine's chance to join NATO by itself. So why did Scholz put the onus on Zelensky? I'd say cynicism and cowardice. (But that's just me. And y'all know what I'm like.)
But we must also remember that Zelensky had said on CNN that he'd been told that there was no way for the Ukraine to get into NATO anytime soon:
I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five. Just say it directly and clearly or just say no, and the response was very clear, you are not going to be a NATO or E.U. member, but publicly the doors will remain open
So why didn't he take Scholz's offer anyway? Just to call Putin's bluff?
Because that's what some of you are saying. You agree that Putin is a "mad-man" who is trying to rebuild the Tsarist Empire to compensate for his short stature and his age-diminished libido.
Right?
Of course, we must remember that Putin had attempted to diplomatically resolve the issue last year and his offer was dismissed.
The United States and NATO on Friday roundly rejected Russian demands that the alliance not admit new members amid growing concerns that Russia may invade Ukraine, which aspires to join the alliance.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia would have no say over who should be allowed to join the bloc. And, they warned Russia of a “forceful” response to any further military intervention in Ukraine.
Their comments amounted to a complete dismissal of a key part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands for easing tensions with Ukraine. Putin wants NATO to halt membership plans for all countries, including Ukraine. The former Soviet republic is unlikely to join the alliance in the foreseeable future, but NATO nations won’t rule it out.
...
“We’re prepared to respond forcefully to further Russian aggression, but a diplomatic solution is still possible and preferable if Russia chooses,” Blinken told reporters in Washington. He categorically dismissed Russia’s claim that NATO had pledged not to expand eastward following the admission of several former Soviet satellites after the end of the Cold War.
“NATO never promised not to admit new members; it could not and would not,” Blinken said, accusing Putin of raising a strawman argument to distract from Russian military moves along the Ukrainian border.
“They want to draw us into a debate about NATO rather than focus on the matter at hand, which is their aggression toward Ukraine. We won’t be diverted from that issue,” Blinken said.
...
Blinken said Moscow was well aware that NATO would not accept the demands.
“Certainly part of (Putin’s) playbook is to put out a list of absolutely non-starter demands and then to claim that the other side is not engaging and then use that as somehow justification for aggressive action,” Blinken said.
Of course, it's kind of odd that before he launched his unprovoked act of criminal aggression to expand the Russian Empire, that Putin would attempt to tie his own hands diplomatically. What if his ruse of an international agreement to respect Ukrainian neutrality had been accepted? Then, I suppose, Putin would have sneered and said: "Hah! FOOLED YAH!!!!" as he sent in the tanks.
Just because he'd been protesting for years about NATO's eastward expanion is no reason to think he was genuinely concerned about it. Just because most sane people who studied foreign affairs understood that the Ukraine being in NATO would be a red-line for ANY Russian government is no reason to think that Putin is anything but a demented threat to the entire world.
As Owen Grey at Northern Reflections will tell you: The USA constructed a "rules-based international order" at the end of World War II, that nobly attempted to eliminate war and put all conflicts between states to diplomacy. And, since 1945, the USA has led by example. Since 1945 the USA has NEVER meddled in the affairs of other countries (let alone invaded them)!
As President Biden asked with all sincerity:
Let’s get this straight. How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engage in activities that he’s engaged in? It diminishes the standing of a country that is desperately trying to make sure it maintains its standing as a major world power.
Of course this is all bullshit. The proxy war that the USA is conducting against Russia in the Ukraine is just a conflict between gangsters. The USA has always been the most belligerent gangster because it has long been the most powerful. And it has been breathing in its farts so long, and hearing from lickspittle "allies" like Canada, Australia, the UK, the EU, and Japan that its farts smell wonderful for so long, that it has been driven insane with self-deluded hubris.
And, I must say, ... all of you shit-libs who swallow all this crap, ... you should be ashamed of your intellectual failure and debasement. You are part of an ocean of stupid minds who are cheering on the USA's evil desire to weaken Russia (for no good purposes) by fighting them with Ukrainian lives.
Another reason Zelensky rejected the German's cynical offer is because he knows that the degenerate fascists in his government and military apparatus (put there and supported by the United States government) would murder him if he accepted it.
Anyway, ... here's a nice piece from Victor Grossman from CounterPunch that most closely mirrors my thoughts on the matter.
Such “non-starter” responses, past and present, indicated that the goal was not reconciliation, coexistence or cooperation with Russia in solving world problems, but its demise as a world power – with international warfare quite possibly included. The US leadership – headed by an unsteady but belligerent Biden, who aside from openly calling for regime change, a dangerous demand, is moving to supply bigger and bigger weapons, while pressuring Zelensky, who seemed open at first to some form of settlement, to voice ever more unlikely conditions and turn instead to talk of defeating Russia, thus making a negotiated peace more and more difficult.
Here's another one from Jim Kavanagh who has a slightly more belligerent take:
“Every war ends in negotiations,” they will say, and “we”—the US government and NATO—have to encourage Ukraine to compromise.
This attitude is well summed up in Aaron Maté’s citation of former diplomat Charles Freeman regarding US/NATO’s “disregard for diplomacy”: “Everything we are doing, rather than accelerate an end to the fighting and some compromise, seems to be aimed at prolonging the fighting.” This is echoed in Noam Chomsky’s insistence that “the prime focus” should be on “moving towards a possible negotiated settlement that will save Ukrainians from further disaster.”
Here’s the thing, however, that is very important to be clear about in this situation: There is no possibility of “negotiations” or “compromise” in the optimistic sense implied—i.e., talks leading to a deal in which, in some mutually satisfactory way, each side gets and gives up something important to it.
There is no possibility of such “negotiations” or “compromise” because that already happened.
Negotiations and compromise were made when the United States promised not to move NATO one inch to the east in exchange for absorbing East Germany. Negotiations were made, successfully, with the Minsk agreement, which—at Putin’s insistence, against the independence urgings of Donbass and its Russian supporters—would have granted the Donbass regions limited autonomy within the framework of a unified Ukrainian state. That wasthe compromise. And again, with Minsk 2, negotiated after Kiev broke the agreement, attacked Donbass, and almost had its army wiped out, but for Putin holding LDPR back. And again, with the “Normandy Format,” after Kiev spent seven years continuing to attack Donbass and repeatedly and explicitly stating its refusal to abide by the former negotiated compromises.
Russia initiated its offensive because all the possibilities for a negotiated peace with Kiev (and its U.S. handler) under any conditions other than Russia is now demanding have been used up. Everyone must understand that, and how dangerous it makes this moment. Compromise agreements were successfully made—at least three times!—and then continually destroyed by U.S. and national fascist intransigence and aggression, with attacks on Donbass over eight years that took 14,000 lives. And no one in the U.S.’s “international community” cared a whit.
Lastly, here's an interesting discussion from "Useful Idiots" where economist Michael Hudson discusses the Biden administration's efforts to profit from the explosion of international inflation that it's anti-Russian policies have created.
And if you looked at what the results of the conflict are, you have to assume that everybody was talking about the results [as] were known. They’re very clear. The results are a very large increase in fuel prices, oil, and energy prices, a very large increase in agricultural prices with declining supplies. This will leave most of Africa and Latin America—third-world countries, the Global South—unable to pay their foreign debts, which is going to result either in a massive debt default or it will result in a debt repudiation.
Countries are going to have to choose. Are they going to have to operate their homes without energy, their factories without energy—and energy consumption per capita is directly connected to GDP for the last 150 years. Every chart shows energy use, GDP, and personal income go up together.
So, what are countries going to do when they can’t afford to pay the higher prices for energy? Well, Janet Yellen, who was the Federal Reserve head and [now] the Secretary of the Treasury says, ‘Well, what we’re going to do is use the International Monetary Fund to preserve America’s unipolar hegemony.’ I think she used almost those words. We have to keep American control of the world and we’re going to do it through the IMF. And that means in practice using the IMF to create special drawing rights, which will be sort of like free money, the bulk of which will go to the United States to support its military spending abroad for all of this huge military escalation. And it will enable the IMF to go to countries and say, ‘We will help you pay your debts and not be foreclosed on and get energy, but it’s conditional.’ On usual conditions: you have to lower your wages; you have to pass anti-labor legislation; you have to agree to begin selling off your public domain and privatize.
The energy and food crisis caused by the NATO war against Russia is going to be used as a lever not only to push privatization, largely under control of US investors and banks and financiers, but it’s also going to lock countries into the US orbit all the more, both the Global South and especially Europe.
I'm tired of blogging for the day.
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