[…] The amendment is justified, according to supporters, by the need for deterrence against “Russian aggression on NATO’s eastern flank.” This embodies a willful confusion of interests, with Ukraine on the one hand, and existing NATO members on the other. In Ukraine, a frozen separatist conflict with Russian involvement is indeed ongoing, together with the territorial dispute over Crimea. These are, however, the kind of issues all too typical in the aftermath of the fall of empires. They stem from the twin issues of minority rights and historically disputed borders (Crimea was part of the Russian Republic until it was transferred to Ukraine by Soviet decree in 1954).
No politician or member of the U.S. foreign and security establishment has ever even attempted to explain why Russian involvement in Ukraine — with its territorial issues, its huge Russian minority, and deep historic, cultural, and emotional ties to one another — somehow implies Moscow’s desire to attack Poland or Romania, which contain no Russian minorities or territorial disputes. The justification for this belief in the Washington establishment is instead based on little more than memories of the 1940s, together with an assumption of innate, blind Russian tendencies to aggression. Läs artikel