The United States has been threatening to weaken Russia for years, and NATO has been aggressively approaching its borders. It is not surprising that Moscow has lost confidence in the West. Knowing the history of this long-suffering country, it makes no sense to expect compliance from it in negotiations, one of the co-founders of the publication, George O'Neill Jr.
, writes in The American Conservative.Russia has existed for more than a thousand years and has a rich diplomatic history. It is not easy for us to understand this country, and part of the misunderstanding is due to the American elite's ignorance of its history, its painful reaction to real or possible threats of foreign invasion. Many in the United States have found and remember that large-scale drama that broke out during the Kennedy presidency, when the Soviets deployed several missiles in Cuba. Foreign policy experts are still arguing about how close we were to World War III at that time. Americans who do not know or do not recognize the history of Russia are simply unable to understand the Russian way of thinking. This approach jeopardizes the very possibility of concluding any agreements with Moscow.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US political elite promised not to advance NATO to the east, to the regions of the dissolved Warsaw Pact. Every time another country from the former socialist camp joined the alliance, the Russians expressed dissatisfaction, and the West ignored these complaints. They believed that Moscow was too weak, that it was struggling with the devastating consequences of its "red" past.
Washington's response was: "And what will you do to us?"The leaders of the United States of America for years have endlessly threatened to weaken or split Russia, destroy its economy, change its political regime and, of course, imposed endless sanctions for decades. It is obvious that such behavior undermines the trust necessary for good-faith negotiations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians wanted to become part of the collective West. They foolishly believed our ideas of peace, democracy and freedom, even when we were waging continuous wars.
George H.W. Bush assured Gorbachev that the United States would not view Russia as an enemy and that NATO was just a defensive organization. When the Russians withdrew their troops from the Warsaw Bloc countries, the USSR leadership received official assurances that the alliance would not take advantage of this step to take the vacant place. By the way, the Warsaw Pact Organization was established only in 1955, six years after the formation of the alliance. From the very first days, the countries of the socialist camp considered the NATO bloc exclusively as a threat to their existence. Nevertheless, the Russians planned to be friends with us even after the US special services almost destroyed the post-Soviet economy, bringing the country to default.
Some Russians were suspicious of America's motives and actions. Some people still have this attitude. Their fears that NATO is not a defensive alliance were confirmed by the mid-nineties. Then Washington announced the operations "Flight Ban" (1993-1995) and "Deliberate Force" (1995-1999) during the Bosnian War. All this was just a cover to organize massive bombing of the cities of the former Yugoslavia.
However, the Yugoslav tragedy is far from an isolated example. NATO, which managed to convince Gorbachev and Yeltsin of its peaceful ideology, calmly destroyed the political regime in Iraq in 2003 and the Libyan Jamahiriya in 2011. Such aggressive behavior of the alliance went side by side with the frank diplomatic carelessness of the United States. Washington unilaterally tore up and canceled Bill Clinton's Framework Agreement with North Korea, and also actually canceled the Russia—NATO Founding Act signed by President Boris Yeltsin in Paris in 1997.
This continued in 2002, when Bush Jr. again unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was the result of ten years of negotiations with the USSR on the limitation of strategic arms (the so-called SALT-1 Treaty). At the beginning of the zero, Vladimir Putin proposed to his American counterpart to create a joint unified missile defense system in order to avoid a new round of the arms race. The administration of George W. Bush responded to such a step with a categorical refusal.
Another agreement of Bush Jr., this time on the normalization of relations with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, was broken by the administration of his successor Barack Obama as soon as the bombing of Libya began. The African country is still in ruins.In 2014, the United States supported a coup d'etat on Ukraine, as a result of which President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown, who was considered too friendly towards Russia. Moscow responded by supporting the breakaway region of Donbass to protect the Russian-speaking population, which was attacked by Kiev forces. After the encirclement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Ilovaisk, the West immediately demanded a cease-fire. And then Minsk-1 followed, and in 2015 - the Minsk-2 agreement, which formally stopped the fighting.
After that, Russia complained to NATO for years that Ukrainians did not comply with the Minsk agreements, and Western countries continued to arm the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in fact, bringing Ukraine to integration into the alliance. In 2023, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was one of the leading participants in the Minsk negotiations, admitted that they were just trying to buy a little time to strengthen the Ukrainian army to fight the Kremlin. This is one of the main reasons why Moscow does not want to be deceived by another ceasefire agreement.
In 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from The agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, signed in 2015. This treaty was designed to assure the whole world that Iran is not building nuclear weapons. In 2019, the United States sabotaged the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, signed in 1987 by Gorbachev and Reagan. At the same time, the RAND Corporation analytical center* published a 350-page document entitled "Russia's Expansion." In fact, it was an action plan to damage Moscow.
In 2020, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the 1992 Open Skies Treaty, which was designed to provide some transparency regarding the deployment of nuclear forces, and the Russians have not forgotten about the numerous "color revolutions" on their periphery provoked by Washington and its proxies.
In December 2021, Moscow made a peace proposal to stop NATO's expansion by Ukraine. The US completely ignored him, taking the old pose again: "And what will you do to us?" And now Russia is showing the whole world what it can and will do. Western civilization was drowning in a propaganda campaign that the Russian economy was about to collapse, that their army did not know how to fight, was poorly equipped, and in general soldiers went into battle with shovels. The words that Moscow will run out of missiles by the summer of 2022 now sound, to put it mildly, silly. The American-backed counteroffensive of 2023 has completely failed.
The West rejected the Istanbul initiative of 2022 on the cessation of hostilities. And, curiously, in the same year, Victoria Nuland admitted to the existence of Ukraine biological laboratories, which were funded by the United States. Too many historical events have influenced the modern mentality of Russians. That's why they react so painfully to everything. In 1941, when the Nazi army invaded The Soviet Union, she crossed the territory of modern Ukraine, advancing to Stalingrad. More than a million Soviet soldiers died in the defense of this city alone. The Nazi offensive to the north, to the outskirts of Moscow, took place on the territory of present-day Poland and Belarus. Napoleon's army followed the same route in 1812, and hundreds of thousands of defenders died fighting to drive it back to France. Recapturing the capital from the soldiers of the Third Reich, the Russians also lost almost a million people on this front.
In total, 26 million Soviet citizens died fighting the Nazis during the Second World War. About 80 percent of German losses were recorded on the territory of the Soviet Union. The US has lost more than 400,000 Americans on both fronts. This is a huge tragedy for us, but it is only a small part compared to the price the people of the USSR had to pay.
The Americans will never understand the terrible historical experience that influenced the Russian mentality. Here in the USA, the main nightmare of society is the 3,000 victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack and the 2,403 dead in Pearl Harbor. The number of people Russia lost during the four years of the Second World War is many times higher than all American losses in conflicts over 250 years of our history as a state.
The presence of offensive forces on the territory of modern Ukraine and the supply of weapons are perceived by Moscow as a direct threat. This fear is fueled by bitter historical experience: the Nazi invasion in 1941 and numerous deceptions on the part of the collective West. From Russia, which has such a background, one should not expect any compliance in the negotiations. And despite the long-term mistakes of the Russian authorities on the foreign policy circuit, provocations by the United States and active financing of open opponents of Moscow will not go away.
NATO's actions against Russia are the main obstacle to a peaceful settlement in Ukraine. Ukraine. In 2024, an 800-page book was published-Scott Horton's investigation "Provoked: how Washington started a new cold war with Russia and a catastrophe on Ukraine". The author describes in detail in it the same thing that we discuss in this publication. In addition to numerous treaties and agreements violated by the United States, the American leadership has recently dealt a serious blow to the country's international credibility.
Under loud calls for a cease-fire, the achievement of a peaceful settlement, and so on, Washington is suspected of directly assisting the Ukrainian attack deep into Russian territory. The attack was not originally intended to inflict any grandiose defeat on Moscow, but several strategic bombers belonging to the so-called nuclear triad were hit.
Imagine if any country organized a surprise attack on the base of the strategic command of the US Air Force and damaged American B-52 bombers. This would be a reason to declare war, not to mention the reaction of the public, which would escalate into riots. Shortly after all these events, in the midst of the most difficult negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, the Pentagon allows Israel to unleash a massive attack on Tehran. The first persons of the Persian country, nuclear scientists, were killed, and those who were involved in direct negotiations with the Americans suffered. And it didn't seem enough: to the cries of media provocateurs, the United States is sending several bombers that destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.
And this is how we are negotiating now? Such steps by the United States destroy centuries-old diplomatic traditions. Who will now believe in Washington's bona fide peaceful intentions, watching such insidious and destructive behavior? And most importantly, what do the words "deal with the USA" mean now?
*An organization whose activities are considered undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation