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    I heard this interview live, you overtaxed yourself, Morrissey by transcribing it. Archived Message

    Posted by John Monro on July 5, 2023, 11:55 am, in reply to "Professor Serhii Plokhy's ridiculous interview on RNZ National"

    So I sent an e-mail to Kim Hill instead.

    Hello Kim

    I trust this email finds you well. Thank you for interviewing Serhii Plokhy, Ukrainian historian, on the “Russo-Ukrainian War". I had hoped to hear some alternative from the view, universally accepted in the west, but completely mistaken, that this war was an unprovoked war of aggression on Ukraine. I was pleased to hear you put other points of view to him, which however he would not accept.

    This war should be much more accurately be called the "US-Russian Proxy War." Ukraine is the mincemeat, literally, in the sandwich between two rival super-powers. There’s hardly a single thing that Serhii Plokhy said or claimed about this war that I, and many others, might not challenge, but to do that here would require several pages of discussion.

    This war actually started some 30 years ago now, not in 2022 or 2014 that Plokhy claims, when Gorbachev “was led to believe” (this is the exact phrasing of one US politician commenting - I forget which one - but which is confirmed by many others in power in the US, the UK and Europe) that following the collapse of the USSR, and the re-unification of Germany, that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward. The phrase “led to believe” says it all really, the other way of stating this is “we lied”

    Since then we’ve seen NATO expand to take in most of the previous members of the Warsaw pact. (Instead, NATO should have been disbanded following the USSR collapse and a new security arrangement for Europe constructed along with the Russian Federation, and the US withdrawing from Europe - see my PS) - this in the face of continued Russian objections, particularly from Vladimir Putin when he became president. However, despite a toleration over years for this happening, a red line was drawn, no way was Russia going to accept Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. The then US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns, sent a classified memo in 2008 to his political masters, as revealed by Wikileaks, one of the reasons Julian Assange lies mouldering in a political oubliette in London, entitled “Nyet means Nyet”, warning them of Russia would see any membership of Ukraine in NATO as a red line NATO and Ukraine must not cross. It would be viewed as an existential threat to have a US dominated aggressive military alliance on Russia’s very doorstep and hundreds of kilometres of borders.

    https://libertarianinstitute.org/dont-tread-on-anyone/nyet-nato/

    Many other wise commentators, including historians, retired US military figures and diplomats, warned also. Prof. Mearsheimer is probably the best known, and he describes the US as “Leading Ukraine up the primrose path” to what has now proved to be total ruin. Nigel Farage in a speech to the EU Parliament a few years ago, warned on European interference on Russia’s borders in Ukraine - “are you mad?” he railed and he has since repeated his concerns in debates and interviews . US and NATO intransigence, actually it was worse than this, I firmly believe the US neocon agenda was to prod Russia into taking military action so that their “shock and awe sanctions” would bring down the Russian state, which after all, according to them, was just a petrol station masquerading as a country. (This had been their stated objective for years, such as in “The Project for the New American Century” and in policy documents released by the Rand Corporation). In this they were sorely and tragically mistaken, believing as they did their own Russophobic narrative - a weak Putin, a weak economy, a fragile society, a poor military etc etc.. A tragedy that now Serhii Plokhy, his family, friends, colleagues and fellow citizens are all an intimate, abused and horrified part of.

    Look, I could go on, and too often do, but the whole narrative constructed by Serhii Plokhy is one of total disregard to the actual facts, the reality of what is happening. The tragic thing is that he believes it entirely. I confidently predict that when this war ends with NATO’s abandonment and betrayal of Ukraine (just as the US and others abandoned Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam), that when Ukrainians dispassionately survey in tears the ruin that surrounds them and the hundreds of thousands of graves of a whole generation of their fellow citizens, they will come to realise at last the treachery of the west, of the US and the UK in particularly, and of a cowardly Europe in the face of US hegemonic posturing that has brought their fledgling country to ruination and likely a trillion dollar cost to the world in direct and indirect costs (such as energy, fertiliser, grain and food). I wonder when we ourselves will shamefacedly face and admit the same reality?

    The West’s avowed intention not only to bring down Russia but to “isolate” Russia, to make it a pariah nation, seems much more successfully to have done the opposite, pushed China and Russia together and isolated the West from the rest of the world. I suspect indeed that many world citizens, having tolerated Western exceptionalism and suffered the worst effects of imperialism and colonialism, might even be seeing Europe’s and the US’s travails and inability to win this war at great cost to themselves, with a mild sense of schadenfreude?

    This war was preventable and should have been prevented. It merely required four not hard things for any dispassionate observer to accept. 1. That the Russian Federation has de facto possession of Crimea, and a large majority of its citizens wish that to remain. . 2. That Ukraine remains neutral and not part of NATO, and has a military only large enough to ensure its own domestic security. It would then be like Finland, perfectly safe and unmolested on the edge of the forest where resides the Russian bear. It could even join the EU .3. That any NAZI units in the army, and there were an important few, are disbanded. 4. The Minsk 2 agreement is adhered to.

    The US refusal to countenance a single one of these non-onerous demands and instead, even as the US was predicting an imminent invasion, to refuse point blank to negotiate, mischievously and wrongly claiming as justification that “NATO membership was an open door” was an appalling and destructive failure of diplomacy - the US and UK deliberately chose war over an achievable peace. We even have now admitted confirmation from Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko, guarantors of the Minsk 2 agreement and approved by the UN, that this agreement was never going to be honoured, signed only to give more time for Ukraine to arm and increase its military, supported by billions of dollars and direct military aid from the US and NATO. This is actually treachery, and is part of the almost constant lying to Russia (and now China) that the west, and in particular the Biden and UK administrations, employs in its international relationships. No-one now should trust us, and Russia and China certainly don’t. The end result, if not corrected, will be a nuclear confrontation.

    Finally, do I approve of war as a way of settling international disputes, whether Russian or American or British? No.

    I’ll stop here, thanks for your time. The interview was worth hearing, but it made for very sad and frustrating listening.

    Best regards,


    Dr John K Monro
    9 Dublin St
    Martinborough
    5711
    021 525890

    PS. One of my clan ancestors, James Monroe, fifth President of the United States, is best known for the “Monroe doctrine” which gives the US its monopolistic right to prevent European influence in the Western Hemisphere, and which by expanded practice over two hundred years its own permission for the US to interfere as it wishes in any country in the Americas on any pretext or justification it can construct for itself. This has been a disaster for many of the continent's countries. What you may not know, and most people don’t know, that in his speech to the Senate and Congress, Dec 2nd 1823, he applied two principles. The first I outline above, but he also applies another equally important principle, a quid pro quo, that the US would not interfere then or in the future in the affairs of Europe.

    My greatest wish now is that the US should follow James Monroe’s instructions and his doctrine, and leave Europe to manage its own affairs. On a wider basis, it might be useful if the US stopped interfering in other jurisdictions, such as Australia or our own. It has more than enough problems in its own lands to deal to without projecting them elsewhere.

    These are the relevant abstracts of James Monroe’s speech:

    We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

    and

    Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy, meeting in all instances the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none. (My bold)

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