Book Review: How the West Brought War to Ukraine – Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe

This book is written by Benjamin Abelow, who has worked in Washington, DC, writing, lecturing, and lobbying Congress about nuclear arms policy. Abelow holds a B.A. in modern European history from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine. I went through this book to get a different perspective than the one usually presented in Western media, and because it presents several well-informed and unbiased references and analyses.

The twenty main takeaways that I got out of this book, under the author lens, are presented below:

• For almost 200 years, starting with the framing of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has asserted security claims over virtually the whole Western hemisphere. Any foreign power that places military forces near U.S. territory knows it is crossing a red line… U.S. policy thus embodies a conviction that where a potential opponent places its forces is crucially important. In fact, this conviction is the cornerstone of American foreign and military policy, and its violation is considered reason for war.
• Yet when it comes to Russia, the United States and its NATO allies have acted for decades in disregard of this same principle. They have progressively advanced the placement of their military forces toward Russia, even to its borders. They have done this with inadequate attention to, and sometimes blithe disregard for, how Russian leaders might perceive this advance. Had Russia taken equivalent actions with respect to U.S. territory – say, placing its military forces in Canada or Mexico – Washington would have gone to war and justified that war as a defensive response to the military encroachment of a foreign power.
• When viewed through this lens, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is seen not as the unbridled expansionism of a malevolent Russian leader but as a violent and destructive reaction to misguided Western policies: an attempt to reestablish a zone around Russia’s western border that is free of offensive threats from the United States and its allies.
• Having misunderstood why Russia invaded Ukraine, the West is now basing existential decisions on false premises… This argument, which the author presents in detail, is based on the analyses of a number of scholars, government officials, and military observers, all of whom he introduces and quotes from in the course of the book.
• Within months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the explanation offered for America’s involvement changed. What had been pitched as a limited, humanitarian effort to help Ukraine defend itself morphed to include an additional aim: to degrade Russia’s capacity to fight another war in the future… In fact, this strategic objective may have been in place from the start. In March, 2022 – just weeks after the start of the war and more than a month before the new U.S. policy was announced – Chas Freeman, previously Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, observed that “Everything we are doing, rather than accelerating an end to the fighting and some compromise, seems to be aimed at prolonging the fighting, assisting the Ukrainian resistance – which is a noble cause, I suppose, but …will result in a lot of dead Ukrainians as well as dead Russians.” Freeman’s observation pointed to an uncomfortable truth: America’s two war aims are not really compatible with each other. Whereas a humanitarian effort would seek to limit the destruction and end the war quickly, the strategic goal of weakening Russia requires a prolonged war with maximum destruction, one that bleeds Russia dry of men and machine on battlefeld Ukraine. Freeman captured the contradiction in a darkly ironic quip: “We will fight to the last Ukrainian for Ukrainian independence.“
• The assumption seems to be that Mr. Putin would be replaced by a docile, effete puppet subservient to American interests. Gilbert Doctorow – an independent, Brussels-based political analyst whose Ph.D. and postdoctoral training are in Russian history – comments: “Be careful what you wish for. Russia has more nuclear weapons than the United States. Russia has more modern weapons than the United States… Is this a country in which you want to create turmoil? Moreover, if Mr. Putin were to be overturned, who would take his place? Some little namby-pamby? Some new drunkard like (first Russian president Boris) Yeltsin or somebody who is a Rambo and just ready to push the button? I think it is extremely imprudent for a country like the United States to invoke regime change in a country like Russia. It’s almost suicidal.”
• Abelow argues that the Western narrative is incorrect. In crucial respects, it is the opposite of truth. The underlying cause of the war, under the information and facts that he outlines, lies not in an unbridled expansionism of Mr. Putin, or in paranoid delusions of military planners in the Kremlin, but in a 30-year history of Western provocations, directed at Russia, that began during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continued to the start of the war. These provocations placed Russia in an untenable situation, for which war seemed, to Mr. Putin and his military staff, the only workable solution.
• In arguing this case, the author pays special attention to the United States – and subject it to particularly sharp criticism-because it has played the decisive role in shaping Western policy. In criticizing the West, he explains, it is not his aim to justify Moscow’s invasion or exonerate Russia’s leaders. He explains that “he has no brief for Mr. Putin.” Notwithstanding, he believes he had alternatives to war. But he does want to understand him in the sense of seeking to rationally assess the causal sequence that led him to launch the war.
• How would U.S. leaders respond if the situation were reversed – say, if Russia or China carried out equivalent steps near U.S. territory? For example, how would Washington respond if Russia established a military alliance with Canada and then set up rocket installations 70 miles from the U.S. border? What would happen if Russia then used those rocket installations to conduct live-fire training exercises to practice destroying military targets inside America? Would U.S. leaders accept verbal assurances from Russia that its intentions were benign? Of course not. The likely response would be as follows: U.S. military planners and policy makers would look to the offensive potential of the arms and training exercises. They would disregard the stated intentions and would perceive a serious threat. They might interpret the live-fire exercises as signaling an impending Russian attack. The United States would demand that the rockets be removed and, if this demand was not acted on forthwith, the United States might respond with a preemptive attack on the rocket installations, which might in turn precipitate a general war and the possibility of escalation to a thermonuclear exchange.
• Although it is impossible to know the specific motivations that led Mr. Putin to invade Ukraine, a combination of factors was likely at play: (1) the ongoing arming, training to NATO standards, and integration of the military structures of Ukraine, the United States, and other Western powers through non-NATO arrangements; (2) the ongoing threat that Ukraine would be admitted to NATO; and (3) concern about possible new intermediate-range missile deployments, exacerbated by a concern that the U.S. might deploy Aegis, offensive-capable ABM launchers in Ukraine regardless whether Ukraine was vet a member of NATO.
• During the past 30 years, senior U.S. foreign policy experts have repeatedly warned that, in expanding NATO into Eastern Europe, the United States was making a dangerous policy error. In 1997, as NATO was taking a major step toward expansion, George Kennan, perhaps the most eminent American statesman then alive (during the 1940s, he pioneered the policy of “containment” and later served as ambassador to the Soviet Union) warned that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” Kennan lamented the senselessness of the entire expansionary project, asking: “Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fan-ciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?” A year later, in an interview with Thomas Friedman, the 94-year-old statesman responded to the Senates ratification 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 turn over in their graves.” Kennan then added: “Don’t people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now were turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet Regime.”
• In light of the intensity of this war fever, it should not be surprising that those few U.S. political leaders who have the rare combination of clarity and guts required to openly discuss the background to the Ukraine war have been called traitors. In truth, they are patriots. They are refusing to play the tribal game of “My country can do no wrong.” They are recognizing uncomfortable historical facts for what they are and trying to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. And they want to discern the implications of those facts for the present, especially in ways that might limit the death and destruction in Ukraine and, simultaneously, reduce the chance of an apocalyptic nuclear confrontation between Russia and the West.
• We are in an extremely dangerous situation, and Western policy is exacerbating these risks. For Russia’s leaders, what happens in Ukraine has little to do with their imperial ambitions being thwarted; it is about dealing with what they regard as a direct threat to Russia’s future. Mr. Putin may have misjudged Russia’s military capabilities, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance and the scope and speed of the Western response, but one should never underestimate how ruthless great powers can be when they believe they are in dire straits… America and its allies, however, are doubling down, hoping to inflict a humiliating defeat on Mr. Putin and to maybe even trigger his removal. They are increasing aid to Ukraine while using economic sanctions to inflict massive punishment on Russia, a step that Putin now sees as “akin to a declaration of war.”
• The story of an evil, irrational, intrinsically expansionist Russia with a paranoid leader at its helm, opposed by a virtuous United States and Europe, is a confused and strange confabulation, inconsistent with a whole series of directionally aligned events during the past 30 years – events whose significance and meaning should have been readily apparent. In fact, the predominant Western narrative might itself be viewed as a kind of paranoia… The provocations that the United States and its allies have directed at Russia are policy blunders so serious that, had the situation been reversed, U.S. leaders would long ago have risked nuclear war with Russia. For U.S. leaders to assert otherwise, as they now are doing, represents a dangerous disregard of reality. In some cases, this disregard surely represents willful demagoguery. But for some policy makers it must be well intentioned, occurring for the simple reason that they continue to interpret new facts in light of the same spent narrative.
• Overall, the authors primary goal in this book is to correct a false narrative, and for a very practical reason: because false narratives lead to bad outcomes. Narratives are inevitably reflected in behaviors; they are both descriptive and generative. By functioning as models of reality, narratives serve as guides for action. Then, through the dynamic of action and reaction, push and pushback, they can produce the results they allege are already present. In this way, a narrative that is overly pessimistic about the intentions of a potential opponent – what Abelow terms as a “narrative of suspicion” – can potentiate the very threats it purports to mitigate.
• During times of war and military threat, even the leaders of free countries lean toward authoritarianism. Sensing great danger, they may tighten the reins of power, imposing top-down control and expanding the categories of domestic action and speech that are considered treasonous. It is not extreme to suggest that the provocations described in this book created in the mind of Mr. Putin and other members of the Russian political and military class an evolving sense of siege and emergency. The authors point is that one must contemplate the possibility that Western actions contributed not only to Russia’s foreign policies, but to untoward aspects of Russias domestic politics as well. In fact, George Kennan predicted this in 1998. NATO expansion, he said, would “have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy?” Political actors, both individuals and corporate actors, such as bureaucracies and nations, are not static entities… Rather, the human decisions we call “policies” emerge from a concatenation of conscious intentions; unconscious mo-tivations; accidents of history; and personal, human interactions, including blatantly threatening, humiliating, and disrespectful interactions and words, such as those that have emanated from the mouth of President Biden. And it is quite possible that the actions of the United States and its European allies exerted, and continue to exert, a more profound effect on the policies of Mr. Putin, including his domestic policies, than some are inclined to think.
• Who bears responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in Ukraine, for the death of thousands of Ukrainians, both civilians and soldiers, and for the impressment of Ukrainian civilians into the military? Who bears responsibility for the destruction of Ukrainian homes and businesses, and for the refugee crisis that is now adding to the one from the Middle East? Who bears responsibility for the deaths of thousands of young men serving in the Russian military, most of whom surely believe, like their Ukrainian counterparts, that they are fighting to protect their nation and their families? Who bears responsibility for the ongoing harm being inflicted on the economies and citizens of Europe and the United States? Who will bear responsibility if disruptions in farming lead to famine in Africa, a continent that depends heavily on the importation of grain from Ukraine and Russia? And finally, who will bear responsibility if the war in Ukraine escalates to a nuclear exchange, and then becomes a full-scale nuclear war?
• Had the United States not pushed NATO to the border of Russia; not deployed nuclear-capable missile launch systems in Romania and planned them for Poland and perhaps elsewhere as well; not contributed to the overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government in 2014; not abrogated the ABM treaty and then the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty, and then disregarded Russian attempl to negotiate a bilateral moratorium on deployments; not conducted live-fire exercises with rockets in Estonia practice striking targets inside Russia; not coordinated a massive 32-nation military training exercise near Russian territory; not intertwined the U.S. military with that of Ukraine; etc. etc. etc. – had the United States and its NATO allies not done these things, the war in Ukraine probably would not have taken place. Abelow thinks that is a reasonable assertion.
• Shortly after Zelensky was elected in 2019, Stephen F. Cohen suggested in an interview that Zelensky would need the active support of the United States to overcome pressure – including threats against his life from Ukraine’s far right. Without this support, Cohen predicted, Mr. Zelensky would not be able to seek peace: “the new president of Ukraine, Zelensky, ran as a peace candidate… He won an enormous mandate to make peace. So, that means he has to negotiate with Vladimir Putin… But his willingness – and this is what’s important and not well reported here [in the United States] – his willingness to deal directly with Putin… actually required considerable boldness on [the part of] Zelensky because there are opponents of this in Ukraine and they are armed. Some people say they are fascist, but they are certainly ultra-nationalist, and they have said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin…. Zelensky cannot go forward. unless America has his back.”
• The existential threat that Russia perceives from a Western-armed, trained, and militarily integrated Ukraine should have been clear to Washington from the start. Really, what sane person could believe that putting a Western arsenal on Russia’s border would not produce a powerful response? What sane person could believe that placing this arsenal would enhance American security? And if any uncertainty remained, it should have been removed in 2008 when the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, William Burns, who now heads Mr. Biden’s CIA, cabled to Washington that, for Russia, Ukraine was the reddest of red lines. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand why. Yet this transparent reality seems opaque to many in the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, in NATO and the media, and to the sitting American president… So, where does this leave the citizens of the United States and its European allies? Abelow states that “it leaves them-us-in a very bad spot. It is a spot that not only is exceedingly dangerous, putting the entire world at risk of nuclear war: it is one that could only have been arrived at through a level of American governmental stupidity and blindness, and, among the leaders of Europe, a level of deference and cowardice, that is almost inconceivable.” In a recent interview, Gilbert Doctorow was asked what he thinks American citizens most need to know about the war. His reply: “Your lives are in danger.” He continued, “Mr. Putin has been on record that he does not contemplate a world without Russia. And if the American intent is to destroy Russia, then the American intent will be self-destruction… [America] is facing an existential threat of its own making. And the escape from this threat is in front of everybody’s nose: it’s to do a deal with Mr. Putin…” Policy makers in Washington and the European capitals – along with the captured, craven media that uncritically amplify their nonsense – are now standing up to their hips in a barrel of viscous mud. How those who were foolish enough to step into that barrel will find the wisdom to extricate themselves before they tip the barrel and take the rest of us down with them is hard to imagine.