Who's to Blame for the Crisis in Ukraine ?

 September 14, 2014

After almost a year of sustained anti-Russian propaganda in the Western press, Foreign Policy – published by the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – has decided to print an article by John J. Mearsheimer which reads like a veritable Western mea culpa for the crisis in Ukraine.

From the very start, the article denounces the anti-Russian narrative as flawed and makes it clear that the West has knowingly crossed a Russian “red line” in Ukraine. As the author puts it, the main culprit in the events that started to unfold in Ukraine in December 2013 is the West’s triple package of policies consisting of NATO enlargement, EU expansion and the promotion of democracy in Ukraine to the tune of some 5 billion dollars.

Anyone reading the article will agree that the current Ukrainian premier, Arseny Yahtsenyuk, behaves like nothing more than Victoria Nuland’s poodle in Kiev and that his anti-Russian jibes should therefore be discarded accordingly.

Blaming the Russians for the West’s wrongdoings is a time-honored tradition in Washington. Unfortunately, American decision-makers are not known for recognizing the error of their ways or for making amends. What boggles the mind in the Ukrainian crisis is the fact that the problems and the legitimate security interests of a huge country like Russia are being “handled” within the State Department by a low-ranking official like Nuland.

It remains to be seen whether Western officialdom is still capable of taking into account the assessments of its own specialized think tanks, such as the American CFR or the European Council on Foreign Relations, and of getting Europe out of the geostrategic mess it is currently in.