We Should Embrace the More Complicated Story of the Invasion of Ukraine

The phrase “unprovoked war of aggression” has become a bit of a verbal tic among people in the US, when they talk about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It grates on my senses just a little more and a little more each time I hear it, like during last night’s Oscars ceremony.

It’s like someone saying, “I don’t even see color” or “It’s not about the money for me” over and over and over. You start to wonder: who are you trying to convince?

To be clear, Russia did not need to attack Ukraine. The “special military operation” was and still is an elective campaign. That does not mean it is “unprovoked” per se. Neither does it matter that Russia has committed war crime after war crime in the prosecution of its invasion. Subsequent turpitude doesn’t retroactively alter the conditions preceding the action.

In the first few months after the invasion began, a few brave souls did point out that the US refused to enter into discussions about whether or not Ukraine should retain the right to join NATO. That is a crucial breadcrumb in the story. It’s a useful one. It’s one we should embrace.

I get why we ignore it. Why shouldn’t Ukraine have every right to join any organization it wants? Self-determination seems non-negotiable, and rightly so…for the most part. The official narrative is appealing: an innocent country of blonde people trying to decide for itself whom it wants to align itself with is attacked by an evil country led by an ugly toad of a man. Right, meet wrong; now, like Kai the hitchhiker, we smash, smash, smash.

Hard as it might be, consider Russia’s situation before the invasion. While assurances that NATO wouldn’t expand east after the reunification of Germany have been blown out of proportion, it seems clear that Russia feels misled. It is also fair to say that Russia has always felt threatened by NATO. It should. While NATO is a defensive organization, it is still a military organization that extends the nuclear umbrella right up to Russia’s borders. When the shoe was on the other foot during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we were justifiably unnerved by the presence of nukes so close to our shores.

If Ukraine were to join NATO, Russia would find itself with a NATO state along its southern border. We can’t exactly claim the high ground where attitudes towards “southern borders” are concerned, and for Russia, this would mean it has a hostile alliance on two sides of its territory. That’s not a great feeling.

Now think back to what the US (and the World Bank and IMF) did in the 1990’s. We pushed free market reforms and voucher auctions and “austerity.” To close out the decade as Putin came to power, NATO expanded into the former Warsaw Pact. It was not a foundation for building trust.

In that context, the refusal even to discuss Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO makes the US’s loud pronouncements of a pending invasion sound almost like we were egging Russia on. No wonder everyday Russians believe Ukraine is fighting a proxy war for the West.

It is nuances like these that get swept away in a phrase like “unprovoked war of aggression,” repeated over and over as if daring anyone to disagree with the orthodoxy. Ukraine has every right to mistrust Russia, as does Poland, Estonia, and every other country that felt the perverse influence of the Soviet Union. It would be useful, however, to come up with something other than NATO to give them guarantees against ever again coming under Russia’s sway. The banal appeal of ”us versus them” and “right and wrong” may feel good, but they mask the fact that maybe there may be a greater wrong and a better way to fight it.