By Stephen F. Cohen
October 06, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" - The
transcript of President Trump’s July 25 telephone
conversation with Ukraine’s recently elected
president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has ignited the usual
anti-Trump bashing in American political-media
circles, even more calls for impeachment, with
little, if any, regard for the national security
issues involved. Leave aside that Trump should not
have been compelled to make the transcript public,
which, if any, foreign leaders will now feel free to
conduct personal telephone diplomacy with an
American president directly or indirectly, of the
kind that helped end the 1962 Cuban missile crisis,
knowing that his or her comments might become known
to domestic political opponents? Consider instead
only the following undiscussed issues:
§ Even if former vice president Joseph Biden, who
figured prominently in the Trump-Zelensky
conversation, is not the Democratic nominee, Ukraine
is now likely to be a contested, and poisonous,
issue in the 2020 US presidential election. How did
the United States become so involved in Ukraine’s
torturous and famously corrupt politics? The short
answer is NATO expansion, as some of us who opposed
that folly back in the 1990s warned would be the
case, and not only in Ukraine. The Washington-led
attempt to fast-track Ukraine into NATO in 2013–14
resulted in the Maidan crisis, the overthrow of the
country’s constitutionally elected president Viktor
Yanukovych, and to the still ongoing proxy civil war
in Donbass. All those fateful events infused the
Trump-Zelensky talk, if only between the lines.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
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§ Russia shares centuries of
substantial civilizational values,
language, culture, geography, and
intimate family relations with Ukraine.
America does not. Why, then, is it
routinely asserted in the US
political-media establishment that
Ukraine is a “vital US national
interest” and not a vital zone of
Russian national security, as by all
geopolitical reckoning it would seem to
be? The standard American establishment
answer is: because of “Russian
aggression against Ukraine.” But the
“aggression” cited is Moscow’s 2014
annexation of Crimea and support for
anti-Kiev fighters in the Donbass civil
war, both of which came after, not
before, the Maidan crisis, and indeed
were a direct result of it. That is, in
Moscow’s eyes, it was reacting, not
unreasonably, to US-led “aggression.” In
any event, as opponents of eastward
expansion also warned in the 1990s, NATO
has increased no one’s security, only
diminished security throughout the
region bordering Russia.
§ Which brings us back to the Trump-Zelensky
telephone conversation. President Zelensky ran and
won overwhelmingly as a peace-with-Moscow candidate,
which is why the roughly $400 million in US military
aid to Ukraine, authorized by Congress, figured
anomalously in the conversation. Trump is being
sharply criticized for withholding that aid or
threatening to do so, including by Obama partisans.
Forgotten, it seems, is that President Obama,
despite considerable bipartisan pressure,
steadfastly refused to authorize such military
assistance to Kiev, presumably because it might
escalate the Russian-Ukrainian conflict (and Russia,
with its long border with Ukraine, had every
escalatory advantage). Instead of baiting Trump on
this issue, we should hope he encourages the new
peace talks that Zelensky has undertaken in recent
days with Moscow, which could end the killing in
Donbass. (For this, Zelensky is being threatened by
well-armed extreme Ukrainian nationalists, even
quasi-fascists. Strong American support for his
negotiations with Moscow may not deter them, but it
might.)
§ Finally, but not surprisingly, the shadow of
Russiagate is now morphing into Ukrainegate. Trump
is also being sharply criticized for asking Zelensky
to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr’s
investigation into the origins of Russiagate, even
though
the role of Ukrainian-Americans and Ukraine itself
in Russiagate allegations against Trump on behalf of
Hillary Clinton in 2016 is now
well-documented.
We need to know fully the origins of Russiagate,
arguably the worst presidential scandal in American
history, and if Ukrainian authorities can contribute
to that understanding, they should be encouraged to
do so. As I’ve argued repeatedly, fervent anti-Trumpers
must decide whether they loathe him more than they
care about American and international security.
Imagine, for example, a Cuban missile–like crisis
somewhere in the world today where Washington and
Moscow are militarily eyeball-to-eyeball, directly
or through proxies, from the Baltic and the Black
Seas to Syria and Ukraine. Will Trump’s presidential
legitimacy be sufficient for him to resolve such an
existential crisis peacefully, as President John F.
Kennedy did in 1962?
Stephen Frand Cohen is an American scholar and
professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton
University and New York University. His academic
work concentrates on modern Russian history since
the Bolshevik Revolution and the country's
relationship with the United States.
This article was originally published by "The
Nation"- -
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