The art of foreign policy is a good guy, making a deal with a bad guy, to get rid of a worse guy. The dilemma? Can the “good guy” live with an ideologically misaligned “bad guy” as a bedfellow? Perhaps as important: do we know for sure who‘s who? It’s always more complex and nuanced than we realize. Moreover, infantilized Americans want to turn on their news of choice and have someone tell them: that’s the good guy and that’s the bad guy. The media understands our need to feel coddled – we’re busy with families and careers – thus, when the subject is foreign policy, we get soft-serve bullshit and little else.
In 1990, then Secretary of State James Baker told Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev: If you endorse the reunification of Germany (the final piece that “officially” ended World War II), “NATO would not move one inch further.” In 1992, we elected Bill Clinton, the first agent (perhaps unwitting) of the neo-con movement. The U.S. drafted Poland and the Czech Republic into NATO and from its newly advantaged positions, proceeded to bomb the living shit out of Belgrade. Russia frowned. But then 911 happened. The U.S. became the sympathetic core of the anti-terrorist movement – a movement Russia wholeheartedly backed. No sooner than Russia seemed they could be a future ally, the U.S. walked out on the antiballistic missile treaty and proceeded to draft seven more nations into NATO. What followed was predictable: more U.S. military bases in Eastern Europe. Russia frowned.
Ukraine elected Yanukovych on the basis of neutrality. The U.S., in what was a typical regime-change maneuver, took out Yanukovych and installed what they hoped would prove a NATO-friendly agent. Putin is no longer frowning; he’s bristling. Next, the U.S. placed a missile instillation in Romania and explained to Putin it was to keep Iran in check. Meanwhile, the U.S. kept wooing Ukraine.
Just after the 2022 Winter Olympics, there was a moment when diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine could’ve worked, but the United States and Great Britian told Zelinsky, never mind diplomacy, fight, we got your back. We don’t have your front – you’re going to suffer massive casualties and see your cities reduced to parking lots – but we got you back. Zelinsky got all charged up and announced, “We’re going to fight until the last Ukrainian.” That’s not a war strategy; it’s a battle cry.
The Russia/Ukraine debacle is far more involved than America’s cable news oversimplification that states: Zelinsky good, Putin bad. What began 35 years ago with a promise made by a good-faith actor, has been repeatedly bastardized. As for the good guys, bad guys, and worse guys? Like most colossal messes the 21st-century has thus far yielded due to impossible tangled foreign policies, years later, historians will sort it out.
Michael's Corner 
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