Oregon Hill joins the world in mourning the tragedy and destruction of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There has not been a neighborhood vote or anything, but I am confident neighbors would rightly condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law.

That said, there needs to be more editorial on what lead to this horrible moment in history. Before that though, the standard disclaimer- this editorial, and indeed, this site, does not portend to represent ALL of Oregon Hill residents’ opinion.

Certainly, the following editorial view is not being addressed by the corporate media- not nationally or locally, and probably does not represent the majority of popular American opinion either- but it needs to be expressed- President Biden is wrong when he declares the Russian invasion ‘unprovoked’.

Biden and other media and government leaders do themselves no favors when try to obscure the American involvement and actions preceding the Russian invasion.

In the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Warsaw Pact, and despite previous promises to not do so, America has pushed a policy of NATO expansionism that has alarmed and angered Russia. Despite many warnings from foreign policy experts, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were added to NATO in 1999, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia following in 2004. In a December 2021 speech to his top military officials, Putin expressed his concerns about Ukraine in particular:

Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises. The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads….
Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one “but.” International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own security at the expense of the security of other states….
In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.

Now, Putin is a murderous thug with a reputation for executing journalists that criticize him, but he is also valued by many Russians as a ‘strongman’ who has rehabilitated Russia’s stature in the world since Yeltsin. Having him with a nuclear button is terrifying as he would be a real ‘cold fish’ pushing it. We can only hope that his love of country and self-preservation would prevent him from doing so. You trap a bear in a cave and it will lash out. Why has the U.S. embarked on this dangerous course and brought Ukraine along with it?

And in particular in the Ukraine (the name means ‘borderlands’), there is a very sordid C.I.A. track record of arming neo-Nazi militia. This is NOT to say that all Ukranians are fascists, but this element has been tolerated and even encouraged to fight Russians. Thankfully, local activist Phil Wilyato has done a very good job of reporting on this aspect in the Richmond Defender newspaper and elsewhere. Still, how many Americans really know about this? Because we can be sure that many Russians are aware of it on their border.

But the real problem is that the Biden administration seems to be supporting if not continuing a policy of regime change. In January, it appointed Victoria Nuland to the position of under secretary of state for political affairs at the State Department. Nuland was a key member of the Bush administration who advocated tirelessly for interventionism in Afghanistan and Iraq and later joined the Obama administration and advocated tirelessly for interventionism in Libya and Syria. (We will see if the Ukraine refugee crisis surpasses the Libyan one, biggest since World War II.) But Nuland became especially infamous in her post as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, where she helped orchestrate a coup in Ukraine in 2014.

Most Americans don’t know the story of the right wing Maidan Coup, which many U.S. mainstream media outlets did not cover. This essentially gave Putin the opening he needed to have Russia illegally annex Crimea from Ukraine and was a major event that lead to the current war.

As stated above, none of these things excuse or justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but they definitely represent American provocation. The question is what comes next? Is Biden’s plan to push ‘regime change’ policies on Russia, a nuclear power? This risks WWIII. Sadly, Ukraine’s immediate future is that of a battlefield, unless cooler heads prevail. Negotiating for Ukraine’s permanent neutrality is a real option, but it may be lost in a fog of war.

Also sadly, any real political conversation on this topic, in the U.S. at least, will likely be drowned out by the same neo-McCarthyism and smearing that we saw during Russiagate, with racist conman Trump and his Russian thug friend Putin used as foils for triangulation. The ruling Democratic Party continues to punch left while joining the rest of the country in drifting to the right. In the process of all this, America will probably squander windows of opportunity for a new course and foreign policy.

At the same time, to end on a brighter note, America and Europe have new incentives to reform energy policy and move more quickly towards renewable energy. From the executive director of the Electrification Coalition:

“Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is a devastating crisis whose impacts are being felt around the world.
“This conflict is the latest example of the inextricable links between our energy systems and our national security, and it vividly demonstrates the human and economic costs of powering transportation with fossil fuels. In 2020, Russia was the world’s third-largest producer of petroleum. The U.S. transportation sector’s overwhelming dependence on volatile global oil markets – and the unreliable actors who influence them – is a direct threat to the interests of the United States and our allies.
“Widespread adoption of EVs is the best scalable strategy to loosen oil’s grip on our national security and our economic prosperity. As the price of gasoline rises, with impacts felt most acutely by those who are most vulnerable, it is time for bipartisan leadership to accelerate the arrival of a transportation future that is domestically powered and stably priced.
“The Biden administration has taken important steps to support the electrification of our transportation sector, including enactment of the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which includes unprecedented levels of funding for EV charging infrastructure and electric school buses, and executive orders to electrify the federal fleet and increase EVs’ share of total vehicles sold in the United States. And the president reiterated the administration’s commitment to EVs in last week’s State of the Union address.
“We applaud the administration for its leadership on transportation electrification, and we will continue to partner with national policymakers on steps forward to reduce our transportation system’s reliance on oil. Much more work remains to be done to free ourselves from the harms petroleum dependence inflicts on the American people, our national security, economic prosperity, manufacturing leadership, public health, and climate.
“It is critical that we come together now to accelerate widespread EV adoption. This is a moment like no other, and our leaders must waste no time seizing it.”

Last month, the Eurasia Group Foundation released a report entitled “Inflection Point: Americans’ Foreign Policy Views After Afghanistan”. Here is the Executive Summary:

On August 30, 2021, the last US soldier evacuated Afghanistan, ending the longest war in American history. The withdrawal elicited disapproval from the professional foreign policy community, who expressed dismay and distress over the future of America’s global role. The public debate sparked by the withdrawal is an important and perhaps long overdue one. So the results of our fourth annual survey of Americans’ foreign policy views arrives at an opportune moment. Here are some of the key observations, which will hopefully inform this debate:
Americans want the US to be engaged diplomatically in the world
Nearly three times as many Americans – 58 percent vs. 21 percent – want to increase as decrease diplomatic engagement with the world;
A plurality of Americans fit a “Global Ambassadors” type. They support active diplomacy but oppose increasing America’s troop presence worldwide;
When asked to rank the forms of international assistance they think the United States should prioritize, the most popular types were non-military: (1) humanitarian aid and disaster relief, and (2) COVID-19 relief such as vaccine donations;
Sixty-three percent support reviving nuclear negotiations with Iran and pursuing an agreement which prevents the development of nuclear weapons;
But they also want to scale back America’s military posture and activities
Most (62 percent) think the biggest lesson from the war in Afghanistan was that the United States should not be in the business of nation-building or that it should only send troops into harm’s way if vital national interests are threatened;
A plurality wants to decrease the number of US troops stationed overseas and reduce security commitments to countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East;
Support for United States-led military intervention to stop human rights abuses decreased by 14 percent between 2020 and 2021; (and support for the United Nations taking the lead increased by 14 percent);
In recent years, Congress has largely ceded its war-making prerogative to the executive branch. 76 percent believe the president should seek Congressional approval before ordering military action;
Seventy percent believe “the US should negotiate directly with adversaries to try to avoid military confrontation, even if those adversaries are human rights abusers, dictators, or home to terrorist organizations;”
Americans generally make a positive appraisal of drone strikes: nearly 70 percent believe they are less costly than sending US troops into combat, or are an effective tool in depriving terrorists of safe havens in remote parts of the world;
In part because they want to redirect resources to domestic priorities
Twice as many Americans want to decrease the defense budget as increase it. The most cited rationale for decreasing the defense budget is a desire to redirect resources domestically;
Half of Americans have a “Jeffersonian” outlook: they are more eager to protect democracy at home than promote it abroad. This outlook increased by 35 percent since 2018;
Though there is little consensus around how to address other great powers
The number of respondents who think the United States should act militarily to prevent Russian troops from invading a NATO ally decreased by six percentage points between 2020 and 2021, and Americans are divided down the middle on this issue;
For the second year in a row, Americans are evenly split on whether the United States should increase or decrease its troop presence in Asia;
​​While a slight plurality of respondents believe the United States should militarily defend Taiwan, Americans appear ambivalent on the issue: 40 percent are unsure about what the United States should do in the case of a Chinese invasion;
Younger Americans (18 to 29 year-olds) are especially weary of war
Eighty percent believe that unless the United States is under attack, the president should be required to seek approval from Congress before ordering military action overseas;
Nearly two-thirds believe the United States should respond to China’s rise by decreasing the US troop presence in Asia, a seven percent increase from last year;
Of all age groups surveyed, young Americans are the most likely to believe the United States is “not an exceptional nation” (60 percent) and least likely to believe it is “exceptional because of what it has done for the world” (12 percent);
Nearly 60 percent are critical of the use of drones, more than twice as many as the older age groups;
Five times as many want to decrease as increase current levels of defense spending.

Meanwhile, what are America’s leaders doing? Last week, the House of Representatives voted to expand the mandatory age-18 Selective Service registration to include women, as part of an annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which at $778 billion this year gave President Joe Biden $24 billion more than he asked for.

Neither this report or the ‘doubling of the draft’ got that much attention by the corporate media, but Americans should be questioning why their elected leaders are ignoring public opinion.

The twenty-year-long Afghan war cost this country trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. The opportunity costs are stupefying. This is a moment when the country could significantly change direction away from war funding and waging ‘endless war’. This could be a new path. Don’t miss this opportunity.