Dear Joe,
I dislike the wording "funding a war in Ukraine".
What the US funds is the Ukrainian defense operation against the Russian TE>> genocidal incursion. That's quite a difference.
I disagree with most everything you say...
I hope at least you do not disagree with the basic premise quoted above. Because if you don't even accept that there is a genocidal incursion and
that Ukraine has not been waging or been threatening to wage war on Russia
at any point in time, but is now defending itself aginst a genocidal incursion, then there's no point in continue a then facts-free discussion.
After Biden got into office Boris Johnson squashed and agreement that
Ukraine and Russia had come to... No war needed we have an agreement.
This is an element of the fine art of Russian propaganda, which always
sticks more or less to the truth, but frames it the truth a very unique
way that you makes the audicent make the wrong conclusions.
It is true that if you follow the time line the Boris Johnson visit to Selensky was one of the last encounters before the peace agreement finally failed.
It is also true that if you read the peace agreement, which recently has
been published in all major German media, so I suppose you also can read a translation of it in the U.S. media, and if you read it without an understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian history, then you could come to the conclusion that it was a very unwise thing for Ukraine to reject it
because if they had signed it, right now, there would be no killing. I
think that's what you are trying to say.
Now let me share with you the Ukrainian perspective.
Ukraine hat that point had seen Russia waging war on it since 2014. There
was the Crimea incursion, after which ALL Western partners told Ukraine to keep quiet. Then there was the Donbas incursion after which Europe started the Minsk peace process, which as we know gave Ukraine some time, ended
some killing, but ultimately could not lead to peace because at least one party to the table, namely Russia, was not really interested in peace. It
was a consistent experience of Ukrainians at the time that Russia always leads its international politics such that it tries to gain post facto approval for its wars by the West and at the same time secure its position
to be able to continue the war at a later time. This is consistent
behavior of Russia in fact already since the time of the famous Budapest memorandum, a paper in which not only UK, US, France, but also Russia guaranteed the independence an territorial integertiy of Ukraine. The West started to trade with Russia in response to that, Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal in resposne to that, and what has Ukraine of it now?
This is the experience that everyone in Ukraine had. So at the time when
the Istanbul negotations took place, it was TOTALL IRRELVANT to any
Ukrainian party including Selesnky himself what some guests from abroad,
be that Johnson, Steinmeier, Macron, Baerbock or who not had to say to
them. Ukrainians knew what they wanted at the time: not just any kind of peace, but a *just* peace which is set up in a way that no further
incursion by Russia is possible.
If you read the text of the failed Istanbul agreement from this angle, you will realize that Russia wnated to keep part of strategically important Ukrainian territory, it wanted to totally disarm Ukraine, it wanted to
keep Ukraine out of any Western alliance, and it agreed to give Ukraine in return a security agreement signed by the Western powers and Russia. So
far, Ukraine might ahve accepted this, this is why they led negotiations
at all. However, crucically, in the agreement, there is a point that says that Russia was granted a right to veto any Western support for Ukraine in the event of invocation of the security guarantee, and Russia was not prepared to drop this point.
This is like a provision that a sheep agrees to take down the electric
fence around its meadow in exchange for an agreement between the shepherd
and the wolve, in which it is written that the wolve has the right to veto any protective actions such has bringing in the dog by the shepherd in the event that the wolve might want to devour the sheep in the future (which
of course is completely outside the wolve's intentions ...).
The latter provision made the agreement unacceptable to Ukraine and they would not have signed it no matter what Boris Johnson's agenda on said meeting might have been.
I hope you can follow me up to this point.
The next question is what the U.S. should or should not do about it. I
accept that you are U.S. citicens and I am not so I have only a limited
right to speak to this topic and we might not find agreement here.
Let me simply (loosely) quote Timothy Snyder here from a recent lecture of his:
"Even if we convince ourselves that Ukraine is unimportant ... pretty much every one around the world looks at Ukraine as an incredibly easy test for us. We don't have to send soldiers. The amount of money concerned is
frekly invisible. Ideologically, Ukraine is exactly the case we keep
saying we care about: a democracy which is directly threatened. So, if we can't pass a test which our allies and everyone else regards as incredibly easy, we cannot expect our allies and adversaries and everyone else to
think that we would pass any harder test in the future."
You can view an excpert from the lecture here:
https://x.com/NFX360/status/1784621066494558391
or see the full one here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVs2y-YeiFM&t=2s
As citizen of a so-far ally of the U.S. I can confirm that this is how we view the U.S.'s role here. I agree that Europe should step up even more
and send even more money and material and determination into this thing, because it is on our continnent. Trump is right when he says this. But the U.S.'s reputation is really at stake when they pull out altogether.
Now you could give a shit about your reputation abroad and say that
schools in the U.S. are more important. The worrying thing about this is, however, that if a military superpower fails a comparatively easy test,
the adversaries are very sure to come up with a harder test. Think of
Taiwan. If Chinae wages war there because it looses respect for the U.S.'s capabilities, then the semiconductor industry will be disrupted so heavily that it could take our economies down - which then will have also an
effect on U.S. schools.
Kind regards,
Tobias
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