Resolved: US Played a Role in Provoking Ukraine War

September 26th, 2023 - by Donald A. Smith, PhD / Progressive Memes

Resolution Calling for the US to Support a
Negotiated End to the War in Ukraine
Donald A. Smith, PhD / Progressive Memes

WHEREAS the United States launched destructive wars, proxy wars, and government overthrows in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, and throughout Latin America;

WHEREAS the U.S lied to the American people about all those interventions;

WHEREAS most of those interventions were poorly justified; many of them were in support of autocratic regimes; and most of them were strategic failures;

WHEREAS according to Brown University’s Costs of War project, US wars since 9/11 have killed over 900,00 people directly and an additional 3.5 million indirectly, costing $8 trillion, displacing over 38 million people from their homes, and causing a refugee crises in Europe and in the Americas;

WHEREAS The United States withdrew from the following arms treaties:

WHEREAS the United States has about 800 military bases in over 70 countries;

WHEREAS the United States spends over $1 trillion a year on the Pentagon, Homeland Security, nuclear-weapons related programs in the Department of Energy, veterans affairs, and war-related interest payments on the national debt;

WHEREAS the United States is over $33 trillion in debt;

WHEREAS desperately needed domestic and international programs lack sufficient funding, including programs related to climate change, hunger, and disease prevention;

WHEREAS the United States expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, in violation of multiple verbal promises given to Soviet leaders at the time of the dissolution of the USSR;

WHEREAS the United States bombed Russian allies in Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria and allied with Muslim extremist groups to fight their governments; the US occupies one third of Syrian territory via its proxy army, the Syrian Defense Forces;

WHEREAS the US incited color revolutions in former Soviet-block countries, using the National Endowment for Democracy to fund anti-Russian groups;

WHEREAS the United States has surrounded Russia in Europe and China in the South China with bases, missiles, and armed client states;

WHEREAS senior US diplomat George Kennan said, of NATO expansion: “I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves”;

WHEREAS former US Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock wrote: “Interference by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine’s civil struggle has exacerbated the crisis within Ukraine, undermined the possibility of bringing the two easternmost provinces back under Kyiv’s control, and raised the specter of possible conflict between nuclear-armed powers. Furthermore, in denying that Russia has a ‘right’ to oppose extension of a hostile military alliance to its national borders, the United States ignores its own history of declaring and enforcing for two centuries a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere” [A reference to the Monroe Doctrine);

WHEREAS William J. Perry, Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton, wrote: “Many have pointed to the expansion of NATO in the mid-1990s as a critical provocation. At the time, I opposed that expansion, in part,for fear of the effect on Russian-US relations….Still, the first step in finding a solution [to the war in Ukraine] is acknowledging the problem and recognizing that our actions have contributed to that hostility”;

WHEREAS Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, wrote: “[T]rying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching, … recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”

WHEREAS former Ambassador Thomas Graham wrote; “[T]he US push in 2008 to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was ill-advised at best. It tied together the two strands of the Bush administration’s hedging policy—NATO expansion and Eurasian geopolitical pluralism—in a way guaranteed to provoke a powerful Russian backlash”;

WHEREAS Ambassador Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell wrote; “Before the war, far right Ukrainian nationalist groups like the Azov Brigade were soundly condemned by the US Congress. Kiev’s determined campaign against the Russian language is analogous to the Canadian government trying to ban French in Quebec. Ukrainian shells have killed hundreds of civilians in the Donbas and there are emerging reports of Ukrainian war crimes. The truly moral course of action would be to end this war with negotiations rather than prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people in a conflict they are unlikely to win without risking American lives”;

WHEREAS Fiona Hill, former official at the US National Security Council during the administration of George W. Bush, wrote; “At the time, I was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, part of a team briefing Mr. Bush. We warned him that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action. But ultimately, our warnings weren’t heeded.”

WHEREAS US Senator Chris Murphy said in an interview in 2014; “With respect to Ukraine, we have not sat on the sidelines. We have been very much involved. …. I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovich from office.”

WHEREAS Henry Kissinger wrote; “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.”

WHEREAS Christopher Caldwel wrote, in the New York Times‘ The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the US Deserves Much of the Blame; “In 2014, the United States backed an uprising – in its final stages a violent uprising – against the legitimately elected Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych, which was pro-Russian.”

WHEREAS Neoconservative Robert Kagan wrote; “Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading…. the invasion of Ukraine is taking place in a historical and geopolitical context in which the United States has played and still plays the principal role, and Americans must grapple with this fact.”

WHEREAS Alfred de Zayas, former senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote: “The war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022, but already in February 2014. The civilian population of the Donbas has endured continued shelling from Ukrainian forces since 2014, notwithstanding the Minsk Agreements. These attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk significantly increased in January-February 2022, as reported by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).”

WHEREAS James W. Carden, former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the US Department of State, wrote: “The de facto alliance of Ukrainian westernizing liberals and the fascist Ukrainian far-Right which together drove the so-called Revolution of Dignity in 2013-14 ignored their obligation to respect the democratic process”;

WHEREAS The 2019 RAND Corporation study Overextending and Unbalancing Russia says: “Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in US military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages” — indicating that the authors were aware that the proposed measures would result in war;

WHEREAS Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive has failed to significantly break through Russian defensive lines;

WHEREAS if Ukrainian forces, with the backing of NATO, were to make significant progress in winning back control of the Donbas or Crimea, or if Ukraine fires long-range missiles into Crimea and Russian territory, Russia will escalate missile attacks on Ukraine — quite possibly including nuclear missiles — since Russians view the war in Ukraine as an existential threat to their existence;

WHEREAS the United States would never allow Russia, or China, to overthrow governments and enlist countries along US borders in a hostile military alliance;

WHEREAS according to a CNN poll (Aug 4, 2023), 55% of Americans oppose further US funding for the war in Ukraine;

WHEREAS if and when the American public realize that they’ve been lied to yet again about an overseas war, the backlash will harm mainstream politicians and empower Donald Trump and other extremist candidates;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we…, call for the United States to pressure Ukraine to agree to a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the US should desist from arming Ukraine with more and more powerful weapons;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that US leaders and media organizations should desist from claiming that the war in Ukraine was “unprovoked”;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this resolution shall be sent to the offices of our state Congressional delegation.

For further documentation about the quotations and for additional information, please see Senior US diplomats, journalists, academics and secretaries of defense say: The US provoked Russia in Ukraine.