Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two Russia-backed separatist territories in eastern Ukraine to act as “peacekeepers” and hinted at the possibility of a wider military campaign. The order was given after Putin signed a decree late on Feb. 21 officially recognizing what pro-Russian groups call the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
President Biden and U.S. allies condemned the Kremlin’s recognition of the two separatist regions as a violation of international law that risks war. Biden said the U.S. is imposing “full blocking” on two large Russian financial institutions, “comprehensive sanctions” on Russian debt and sanctions targeting Russian elites and their family members. Germany announced suspension of the process to certify the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that in the future would bring Russian natural gas to Europe. The U.S. president also announced he was moving some U.S. troops to strengthen Baltic allies, but said it was a “defensive” move, with no intention of fighting Russian forces.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with retired U.S. Army Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, distinguished adjunct professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary, and former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Here, Wilkerson discusses the current crisis in Ukraine, reflecting on the damaging role played by U.S. intelligence and media when he worked with Powell to wrongfully claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, justifying the launch of President George W. Bush’s 2003 war in Iraq.
COL. LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON: This morning, The New York Times reported, “If the world is entering an era in which countries again make decisions based above all on what their military power allows them to do, it would be a huge change,” (according to) the New York Times wording.
I wrote after that when I read it, “You stupid idiot. What has the United States of America been doing for the past 20-plus years?” So it’s a little bit of hypocrisy for us to be going after Putin as we are going after him right now for doing essentially what we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. And I guarantee you that Xi Jinping in China understands this situation in a similar way. It’s the height of hypocrisy for the United States to be talking about Putin.
I have no love for Putin. He’s a reprehensible man. He’s a dictator. He’s a tyrant. And his hold on power is a tenuous one at best. As soon as the oligarchs figure out that he might not be their man anymore, they’ll get rid of him.
But in the meantime, he’s doing what one would expect him to be doing given what the United States has done to him. And it’s the height of hypocrisy for us to say things like The New York Times said this morning.
But as Voltaire said, “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” And virtue in this case would be a diplomatic solution that keeps Europe from going into yet another messy, messy war. Because that’s exactly what this would be, even if it was contained, as I think it would be to just the guerrilla warfare that Putin favors — and our opposition to it mainly through sanctions on Moscow and so forth.
SCOTT HARRIS: We only have a couple of minutes left, Col. Wilkerson, but I wanted to ask you this question. Whether or not Russia invades Ukraine, how can we, in your view, prevent a dangerous and costly escalation of a Cold War that would certainly rebound to negative effects for the U.S. and Russia, as well as the rest of the world? Any advice you would offer citizens or peace organizations at this moment of crisis?
COL. LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON: Anatol Lieven, (senior research fellow) at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft had an article that does all of that. And I told Anatol, none of this will pass our diplomats’ lips.
But what he talks about in that piece is how to do just exactly what you asked how to do. It’s a matter of exquisite diplomacy, is what I like to call it. And it means each side has to be willing to give this, give that for what it really wants.
And if I think if we really were willing to go into this meeting with Putin or whatever it takes and we were willing to take a little mea culpa ourselves, if we were willing to admit to some of the blame ourselves, if we were willing to at least — in the quietness of the room, say “NATO expansion is over. NATO’s out of area operations will be curtailed.”
NATO led the attacks in Libya, one of the disasters that we have created in the post-Cold War era, NATO-led yjsy in the guise of out of area operations — which is the only mission we can find for it today, because there isn’t any other mission unless we fabricate a new Russian threat, which we are very, very rapidly doing so we can justify its existence.
Otherwise, it has no raison d’etre. This is the kind of mess we’ve put ourselves in and Putin has contributed. There’s no question about it. He’s contributed to it from his side. Understandably so, I think, when you think about the generals and his military, he has to answer to. But at the same time, it’s manageable if both sides will come at it from Putin’s perspective “I don’t want these sanctions. I don’t want this mess that these sanctions are creating for me.” And we come at it from the side of “I don’t want war and I certainly don’t want an exchange of nuclear weapons.”
And by the way, the other owner of the major amount of nuclear weapons in the world is Vladimir Putin. And one of the things we desperately need to do in these talks is spin off into new arms control. Because if we don’t, we are facing the second most serious crisis we’re confronting today, climate crisis being the most serious. And nuclear weapons. We have virtually destroyed all of the arms control agreements. The only thing left is the New START Treaty. We’ve abrogated the ABM Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, the INF Treaty. We have nothing left.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with retired Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson (29:54) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
