In the Summer 2022 issue of the Connecticut College Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 3), Eugene B. Kogan ’03 was interviewed for the piece “The War in Ukraine.” Kogan “conducts research and teaches about power dynamics in negotiation and mediation at Harvard.”
I was disappointed in some of Kogan’s rather ahistorical answers, and upon further research I started to connect the dots. According to his bio on Harvard’s website, he “has conferred with all of America’s top diplomats,” including Henry Kissinger. If that name doesn’t immediately set off alarm bells for you, a cursory internet search of his accomplishments should quickly fill you with unbridled rage.
I want to highlight this question and answer: “How important is it for Ukraine to win this war, and if Russia wins, what does it mean for democracies and the world order?”
He responds that “the civilized world cannot afford to countenance the unprovoked invasion and destruction of a sovereign country. […] If allowed to stand, the fact of a nuclear-armed power invading and destroying a non-nuclear armed state will create a precedent of nuclear impunity.”
It’s not necessarily a secret that the United States has a long history of “unprovoked invasion and destruction of a sovereign country” and being “a nuclear-armed power invading and destroying a non-nuclear armed state [creating] a precedent of nuclear impunity”? I also found it dishonest for him to call the conflict “unprovoked,” though he isn’t the first to say this.
Regardless of one’s stance on the conflict, those reading this probably attend(ed) a college in the US, and the US shares responsibility for this crisis. I want to take this time to clear things up and help readers navigate some of the nuance here. First, a short bit of history.
Since it developed and used nuclear weapons on civilians in Japan during WWII—needlessly at that—the United States has repeatedly engaged in the “unprovoked invasion” and “destruction” of several non-nuclear armed states. (Thankfully without further use of nukes, though Korea came close.)
This list includes Korea (1950–1953), Vietnam (1965–1975), Grenada (1983), Kuwait (1990–1991). Under the thin guise of NATO and UN-led operations, there was/is Afghanistan (2001–2021), Iraq (2003–2021, with continued “advising” from US military personnel), Somalia (2007–present), and Syria (2014–present). Libya (2011), while never seeing US troops on the ground, is also worth studying. (Tip: you can pretty much always replace “NATO” or “UN” with “the US” when it comes to conflicts.)
Millions have died in these invasions. Korea (then united) suffered three million deaths—10 percent of the peninsula’s total population. The North alone lost 12-15 percent of its people; its population was half that of the South prior to the war. The US Air Force virtually flattened the North, using more ordinance than what the entire Pacific Theater saw (including napalm and allegedly germ bombs). I wonder why they dislike us.
The invasion of Vietnam—“justified” by a now-known fabrication—took the lives of two million Vietnamese civilians and 1.1 million North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front fighters. The brutal effects of Agent Orange are still felt today by both Americans and Vietnamese. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are arguably the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century so far.
None of these countries provoked invasion, and none of them had nuclear weapons.
The long-lasting destabilizing effects of invasion are still visible today, especially in Libya (where there are now open-air slave markets) and the DPRK. The latter—then part of a non-legally divided Korean republic—is the only country on this list to have developed nuclear capabilities since we invaded them, but not until 2006, and amazingly under crushing sanctions.
The US has never faced international repercussions for these crimes. There’s no slowing down either, it seems. As I write this, we are beginning to see the start of yet another unprovoked US invasion—this time in Haiti (again, they possess no nukes). We keep tossing stones from the grandest of glass houses, and I fear the people of earth are going to start stepping on the shards.
In a February speech, Vladimir Putin mentioned NATO aggression as part of its justification for military activity in Ukraine: “Our biggest concerns and worries [include] the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border.” I’m not here to solve the question of the invasion’s legitimacy, but NATO’s eastward expansion (and the security threat to Russia that follows) is very real and worth examining.
Following the USSR’s (illegal) dissolution in 1991, NATO has grown eastward. 14 new country-members have been welcomed over the past two decades; something president Biden helped push for. Now, Russia is almost completely flanked by NATO and its weapons on its western border.
(Imagine if Russia or China formed a military alliance with Canada and positioned missiles within range of Washington, D.C., or even the submarine base right by our campus! The claim that the invasion is “unprovoked” suddenly seems to hold less water.)
Ukraine seems to be next on the list (at least, Biden has reaffirmed the Russia-excluding “open-door” policy of NATO to Ukraine). Were that to become the case, NATO countries would surround Russia on its entire western border. This would mean that NATO (the US) would be completely within its abilities to position long-range advanced missile systems capable of striking Moscow (see: the US in Italy and Turkey prior to the October Crisis of 1962).
To grossly simplify for print: Russia is a large, powerful country, and does not align itself with US hegemonic desires. They (and the BRICS countries) threaten the US-led unipolar world. Between the Nord Stream II explosion forcing Europe to buy US oil (at much higher costs than Russian-exported gas), the Ukrainian-led Crimean bridge attack, and billions in funding and weapons shipments, it’s clear the US doesn’t want this conflict to end peacefully—or without sending a strong message to anyone challenging their global dominance.
I truly hope this conflict ends with a ceasefire—and soon. I’d also like to use some of this space and say we need to stop framing this as only either a Russian or Ukrainian victory. Russia has a population of over 144 million people, and Ukraine has a population of 43 million people; nearly 200 million people are suffering needlessly (through combat or sanctions, which either don’t work or cause more harm than good) because the United States isn’t getting its way and doesn’t want to get its hands dirty (for now). Currently, the only victors are the shareholders of weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon, their mouths frothing every day the conflict continues.
There need to be peace talks now if we don’t want to see a nuclear winter anytime soon. Find a principled anti-war or anti-imperialist organization near you and learn from them, see what you can do to help. Most importantly, if you’re going to talk about a geopolitical conflict in your alma mater’s magazine, make sure you remember your history.
