RFK, Jr. is undermining efforts to critique the Biden/NATO approach in Ukraine

The presidential candidate's brain-dead narrative of this war made Sean Hannity look like the voice of reason

Only one other article to promote this time, so I’m putting it at the top. At Medium, I take on the repeated mantra of Israel’s “security concerns” that are used to justify so much of its behavior. Once upon a time, Israel faced major threats, but the mantra has not been thoughtfully examined in many years. I correct that.

Examining Israel’s Security Concerns
https://mjplitnick.medium.com/examining-israels-security-concerns-cebb5cbca886

Now on to the newsletter…

My friend Matt Duss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace circulated a video clip of Robert F. Kenedy Jr. being interviewed by Sean Hannity, and in stammering his way through some weird narrative about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, managed to make Hannity look like the sane one. The radical right crown watching loved Kennedy’s performance, and that speaks volumes.

Matt commented on the video, saying “His whole narrative of the war is brain-poisoned nonsense, but it unfortunately gets traction because our foreign policy establishment has worked so hard to earn the distrust of so many.”

I retweeted Matt, adding my comment: “My friend Matt Duss and I have profound disagreements on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In my view there are substantial problems with US/NATO actions. But I completely agree with Matt that RFK, Jr.'s narrative is, as he says ‘brain-poisoned nonsense.’"

I was asked by a fan of RFK, Jr.’s to explain my agreement with Matt’s characterization of his position on the war as “brain-dead nonsense.” Here, in an updated, fleshed out and slightly edited form is what I said.

Kennedy’s narrative is way off base for a start. Minsk II, which he says was agreed in 2022, was actually an agreement that was reached in 2015, after the first Minsk Agreement collapsed. It didn’t last long either. Both Russia and Ukraine consistently violated both Minsk agreements.

The initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did not consist of 40,000 Russian troops, as Kennedy contends, but more like 150,000. It was not an attempt to get the US to negotiate, it was an attempt to take over Ukraine, plain and simple. Putin may not have believed that the initial deployment of troops could have captured all of the country, but the intent was clearly to reach Kyiv and capture a big chunk of Ukraine at least. This aim was quickly frustrated, but you don’t send 150,000 troops across a border to get a third party to talk. That idea just doesn’t make sense.

Nor was Putin’s call to arms, his talk of the non-existence of a Ukrainian people (an absurd and ahistorical stance, although it is obviously true that they and the Russian people are closely related and share a great deal of history and culture), or his nonsense about the government of Zelenskyy being a Nazi stronghold meant to press for talks. All of that was meant to justify the invasion and rouse the nationalistic fervor of the Russian people. While many in the US and Europe contend that these were Putin’s real reasons for invading, it seems to me much more likely that they were what I said, a means to rally the nationalistic of the Russian people. They were messages meant much more for domestic consumption (and audience that would have a harder time corroborating Putin’s claims). That’s who those claims were meant to convince of the “rightness” of Putin’s cause, not an international audience that could easily see the claims as flimsy as they are.

Putin invaded Ukraine for three main reasons, in my view. One, which the mainstream generally accepts, is that he has imperialistic ambitions and wants to rebuild Russia’s foreign reach. Not necessarily the USSR per se, but definitely a Greater Russia larger than what it is now, and bringing some of the old Soviet states back into the fold. That’s not really debatable; it’s been a consistent theme of Putin’s speeches and public addresses for two decades. It’s not like he’s been coy about it.

Reasons two and three are rejected by most supporters of Biden/NATO policy, but I don’t see any logic behind that rejection. So, number two is access to the Black Sea, which Putin has felt was threatened ever since the election and Orange Revolution of 2014, and which prompted his invasion and annexation of Crimea. Access to the Black Sea, as we’ve seen recently, is absolutely crucial for Russian access to the rest of the world for its exports.

The third is NATO expansion, and the promise made by George W. Bush to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Backers of the US/NATO approach deny these last two as reasons for Putin’s invasion despite the fact that diplomats, analysts, pundits and journalists ranging from Noam Chomsky, to current CIA Director Bill Burns to Henry Kissinger (!), from John Mearsheimer to Robert McNamara to Morton Halperin all warned for three decades that these were red lines for Russia. Yet somehow supporters of Biden’s and NATO’s approach would have us believe that these warnings, having now been validated were just wrong. There’s really no logic to it other than the desperation to support Biden’s simplistic contention that “This was … always about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary.”

All of that being said, the United States most certainly did not force Ukraine into a war. Putin invaded. He didn’t have to, but he did. That was what forced Ukraine into a war. These issues I listed were real concerns, and the US and Europe should have been working to resolve them for the last 15 years at least. NATO expansion should have been halted, and Russian concerns regarding the Black Sea should have been considered ten years ago. Those were grievous policy errors in my view that helped bring us to the point we are at today.

But they didn’t necessitate an invasion. There was a lot more Moscow could have done, especially if it tried working with allies such as China, India, and even Israel and Saudi Arabia to create diplomatic pressure on the US and EU to address these concerns. Instead, Putin, true to his character as a strongman and authoritarian, turned to invasion, thinking he could easily conquer Kyiv. It looks a lot like the calculus he made in 2008 with Georgia, but it worked out very differently.

Yes, the US did very badly, but the US does very badly in many realms. That doesn’t justify invading a neighboring country that is not presenting an immediate threat. It was wrong in 2008, and it led to a lot of bull-headed thinking in Washington, London, Brussels, and Berlin. That thinking was matched by Putin’s misplaced assessment of Russia’s strength and his inclination to resort to force, a particularly foolish and disastrous stance given the actual weakness of Russia as compared to the combined NATO nations, or even just the US by itself.

Since then, the Russian push in 2014 to establish itself more firmly in eastern Ukraine and its blatantly criminal annexation of Crimea cried out for addressing these issues diplomatically. Instead, the US insisted took a more belligerent stance. As Barack Obama recently said, “We challenged Putin with the tools that we had at the time, given where Ukraine was.” Sanctions and other pressures were employed, but not a serious diplomatic process that sought to address legitimate concerns while also getting Russia out of Ukrainian territory, both Crimea and the Donbas. Biden continued this pattern, responding with saber-rattling and threats (and incredibly calling that “diplomacy”) rather than taking the approach that Russia was guilty of the greatest of crimes that cannot be justified but that there are real concerns there. Addressing might have arrived at a way out of this repeated confrontation, and ongoing Russian war crimes.

Instead, we get high-handed speeches from Biden chiding Putin for an illegal invasion that, as great a crime as it is, is also something the US is just as guilty of, many times over, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, or the countless other places we have invaded, or where we have abetted such crimes, such as in Palestine and Yemen.

Recently, USAID chief and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was asked by CNN for her reaction to Russia quitting the grain deal that had been allowing Ukrainian ships carrying a significant portion of the world’s grain supply to safely navigate the waters of Black Sea. The interviewer asked about Russia’s claims that the deal offered them very little but was beneficial to Ukraine. Power didn’t respond to this question, but instead asked how Russia dared to complain when it was the one who started the war in the first place.

This response was indicative of the problem with the US approach to the war. OK, Russia’s the bad guy, but this isn’t about winning a public relations war, it’s about getting desperately needed grain to market without sending already inflated prices even further through the roof.

Power’s response was a horrifying evasion of a legitimate and important question. The complete lack of rationality and pragmatism in favor of jingoism reflected in Power’s response was perfectly in line with the ay the United States and NATO have prosecuted this war. Fine, Russia is the bad guy, but you still have to get them to agree to a deal regarding Ukrainian access to Black Sea shipping lanes.

Expecting Russia to say “yes, it’s all our fault, so we’ll get back into a deal that isn’t giving us what we expected” is obviously absurd. But it’s also emblematic of the Biden administration’s whole approach. Biden and Russia are right in limiting the weapons they are giving Ukraine, and it has been enough to stop Russia from achieving its objectives.

But that limit means it’s not enough for Ukraine to get Russia out of significant areas that it has captured, much less to reach Zelenskiy’s stated war aim of ejecting Russia from all Ukrainian territory. It’s right not to give Ukraine greater weaponry, but then we absolutely must work with both sides to find a diplomatic way out of this war, lest the stalemate we have helped to create drags on and devastates even more of Ukraine and kills many, many more people.

One thing RFK Jr. got right was that in Spring 2022 there was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia for a ceasefire. According to Foreign Affairs, the terms were: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries. Boris Johnson pressured Zelensky to pull out of the deal, certainly with the full agreement, if not at the behest of, the United States.

I have been arguing for a year or more that the United States and NATO have not tried nor desired a diplomatic resolution. Everything I see supports that view. But constructing a narrative where the US/NATO essentially started this war is neither correct nor helpful. On the contrary, efforts of people like me to try to cut through the massive propaganda around this war (eerily reminiscent of 20 years ago and Iraq) are undermined when people portray Putin as having been forced into the invasion. He wasn’t.

In fact, if Putin had thought it through, he would have realized that this works against every interest he has. China is not at all happy with this. It has caused NATO to become far stronger and to expand—right up to Russia’s border with Finland. It is less feasible for Ukraine to compromise on Crimea and the Donbas than ever, and Putin will absolutely be dealing with a much more aggressive Europe. Not to mention how weak he has made Russia look despite its military superiority to Ukraine.

Putin brought all of this on himself. Yes, the US and NATO were belligerent, but they did not force Putin to invade. In fact, invasion was a poor option for Russia, and much of the Western strategy was based on the idea that Putin would recognize that fact. He didn’t, whether because he was getting really bad intelligence, or it was his overwhelming arrogance, or, most likely, some combination thereof.

Making Putin the victim, whether by saying we forced Russia to invade or saying we forced Ukraine into war (both of which RFK has said) only strengthens Russophobic and irrational propaganda and makes a reasoned policy debate ever more impossible.

So, yes, brain-dead is, in my view, a kind way to characterize RFK Jr.’s “ideas” about this war.