The United States Constitution: Lies and Wars
Under the United States Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war, raise and appropriate the necessary funding.
“Article I, Section 8 states that, “The Congress shall have the power…To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; “To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; “To provide and maintain a navy; “To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; “To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions” https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/war-and-constitutional-separation-of-powers
The President’s powers are to serve as Commander in Chief to execute Congress’ decisions.
Article II, Section 2 states that, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 70 about the importance of an energetic executive when it came to protecting the liberty and safety of the people: “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws… to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy” (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 70, 1788).
The last war declared by Congress was World War II
The Vietnam War (1955-75)
When we were in college, the US chose to intervene in the middle of a civil war in Vietnam. Our leaders lied to the American people that the North Vietnamese had attacked US naval vessels; the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was speedily passed by Congress to authorize US intervention. Congress did not declare war, but it did fund the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution The war did not go well in the US where a massive peace movement opposed the war or for the South Vietnamese government that collapsed and fled when the US withdrew its troops. The killings and destruction throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were enormous; an estimated 1-3 million Vietnamese died. In its aftermath, Vietnam was united under Communist rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War After the war, the US ended military conscription of the nation’s youth, transitioned to a professional army, and extended the right to vote to citizens between the ages of 18-21.
The background to the US involvement in the civil war in Vietnam was the Cold War between the US and Russia in the aftermath of World War ll. Russia invaded and took over Eastern and a good part of Central Europe during and after the war. In China, the Chinese Communists had defeated the Chinese Nationalists (now in Taiwan). Bordering China and Russia, North Korea had attacked and tried to take over South Korea, and the two Koreas, US, the UN, Russia and China fought to a stalemate there for three years. France was beaten and ousted from its colonial empire in Southeast Asia including Vietnam, and the British were evicted from Malaysia. Closer to home, Castro’s Cuban Revolution gave the Soviet Union an ally in the Western Hemisphere not far from the shores of Florida.
The US was gripped by anti-Communist fever which peaked with the delusional conspiracy theories of Senator Joe McCarthy and the red scare hearings of HUAC (the House Unamerican Affairs Committee). The legacy of this particular Red Scare period persists to the present day.
Vietnam, now a unified Communist nation, thrives economically and collaborates with the US as a strong trading partner. The US and Vietnam share common concerns about Chinese military expansionism in the South China Sea.
The Korean War (1950-53)
We often forget about the Korean War, proportionately it was more deadly than either World War II or Vietnam, and it left both halves of Korea in total ruins. I was in kindergarten and elementary school during that time and have no recollection of the war.
Korea was taken over by Japan in the early 20th Century and was a colony of Japan until after the Second World War. After the war ended, the US and Russia divided the administration of Korea at the 38th parallel, much as Germany had been divided.
The leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, decided to reunite the two halves by invading South Korea. He was given the green light and armed, equipped and advised by Mao in China and Stalin in Russia; they all believed the US would not intervene. North Korea was less populous than the South, but militarily much the stronger state and more industrialized as well. They miscalculated and misjudged the US response, and the US troops arrived under the auspices of the UN. Russia had been boycotting the UN Security Council at the time and thus had no veto.
Initially, the South Korea army was badly beaten by the North and confined to a tiny fraction (10%) of the territory. With the arrival of many more US forces, the combined UN and South Korean forces pushed the North Koreans back and occupied about 90% of Korea. China warned the US and UN that it would intervene if they went past the 38th Parallel. The US under General MacArthur did so and went very close to the Yalu River, the boundary between Korea and China. It overstepped and miscalculated, and China, fearing with reason that MacArthur intended to invade China, entered the war. They drove the Americans and South Koreans back and tried without success and at the loss of many lives from their armed forces to “liberate” the entire Korean peninsula. After three years of war, the entire country was destroyed on both sides, and an armistice was reached. The nation was still divided at the 38th Parallel, and no peace treaty was ever negotiated.
The Korean nation remains divided. South Korea has thrived economically; it has become a highly developed economy, an industrial powerhouse, a strong democracy, and has been a staunch ally of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea North Korea by contrast has become a massive military power with a weak economy and bouts of starvation of its people. The North Korean armed forces, or the Korean People's Army (KPA), is estimated to comprise 1,280,000 active and 6,300,000 reserve and paramilitary troops, making it one of the largest military institutions in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea#Military Until the mid 70’s North Korea’s economy thrived and living conditions improved dramatically. Since then, its economy has stagnated and declined. “In 2012, (North Korea’s Gross national income per capita was $1,523, compared to $28,430 in South Korea.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea North Korea has been strongly allied with China and Russia from 1948 to the present but pursues its own independent nuclear arms capability. It has adhered closely to Stalinism, national self-sufficiency, and central economic planning, putting it at odds with the economic market reforms and participation in global that lifted up the Chinese economy so dramatically.
The Afghan Wars (2001-2021)
The wars in Afghanistan date back to the 19th Century with Russia and the United Kingdom seeking to dominate the country to protect their interests in India and Central Asia respectively and the Afghan tribes and leaders fighting back. In 1978, the Communist Party in Afghanistan overthrew the existing government and killed its leaders, then the party leaders began killing each other and all those who opposed their agenda for the country. The local political, military, and religious leaders revolted and began an insurgency. The Afghan Communist Party asked the USSR for protection against the insurgents opposing them. In 1979, the Soviets invaded and became enmeshed in fighting guerilla warfare all over the country. The US, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia and most of the Islamic world supported the Afghan rebels, known as the mujahedeen. It took 10 years of terrible fighting before the USSR withdrew. This, in part, led to the dissolution and breakup of the USSR into its constituent Republics, of which today’s Russia is the most populous.
Between half a million and 2 million Afghan civilians were killed in the conflict between the USSR and the Afghans. Five million became refugees, mostly to Pakistan.
The US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and others trained, financed, and armed the Afghan militants. The Saudis and Pakistanis and others trained and educated the Afghan mujahedeen through the madrassas in a perverted form of Islamic religion that glorified killing their opponents (whether fellow Muslims or not). Volunteer militants came from throughout the Islamic world to fight the “atheistic Russian Communists”. After the Russians left, the Afghan mujahadeen began fighting among themselves for dominance. The Taliban, supported by the Pakistani intelligence services, emerged victorious in the internecine struggle.
Al Qaeda built a coalition among the foreign militants who had come to Afghanistan to fight for their messianic ideals against the Russians. After the Taliban took over the government, Al Qaeda found haven in Afghanistan. It was comprised of Sunni Arabs who sought to establish a Sunni Arab caliphate from Gibraltar across North Africa throughout the Middle East, and in South Asia, reaching from the Mediterranean to Indonesia and the Philippines. It is important to understand the differences between Sunnis and Shia; they have very different Muslim beliefs and theologies. Over the centuries they have frequently been at war with each other, in very much the same fashion as Protestants and Catholics in Europe. Iran is a Shia theocracy. Al Qaeda wanted to establish a Sunni theocracy built along the medieval Sunni Arab Caliphate. It wanted to overthrow both the leaders of the secular Arab governments like Iraq and the monarchical governments like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
From its safe haven in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, began to develop and execute attacks on the US, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Yemen, the Sudan, Somalia, and many others. It attacked the US claiming it was supporting and sustaining the Arab governments in power. On 9/11, they succeeded in destroying the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon. This caught the attention of the world, and Al Qaeda’s exploits reverberated among terror networks, and it metastasized among like-minded terrorists around the globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Broader_influence The US then invaded Afghanistan, ousted the Taliban, and chased Al Qaeda leaders all over the globe, finally killing Osama Bin Laden in a safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan over ten years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Aftermath Ayman Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s successor was killed by a US missile strike on his safe house in Kabul, ten years after Bin Laden.
The US replaced the Taliban regime with an elected, selected government that proved unable to win over the overall allegiance of the Afghan people. The US spent over $2 trillion and lost 6,000 lives trying to build a successful Afghan government, but in the end the Taliban outwaited the incompetence of the US nation-building, and the inability and corruption of the Afghan government to perform its basic tasks of delivering services and security in the rural areas where Taliban insurgents ruled. Over 110,000 military and civilian Afghanis lost their lives. The US basically thought it was winning, thought the Taliban was defeated and therefore eschewed any efforts to promote a political settlement until it was too late, and the Taliban rolled into Kabul after the US (Trump Administration) had agreed to withdraw and the Biden Administration did so. https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/11/afghanistan-was-loss-better-peace
The Taliban is now making a terrible mess of things: sidelining and depriving women and girls of educational opportunities, alienating the international donor community, terrorizing its people, and depriving them of the essentials like health care, nutrition, and education. The open question for the US is how to respond to a regime whose domestic policies we despise that nevertheless occupies a strategic position in between India, Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/23/taliban-afghanistan-diplomatic-strategy-united-states/
What is its future? It’s an impoverished nation ruined by 40 years of near constant warfare. It does not have a wealth of natural resources. Does it transform and become a beautiful, peaceful, hospitable destination for global tourism? Does it become an exporter and a haven of Sunni terrorism? Does it become a neutral Switzerland among the regional rivals? Does it develop an economy that requires an educated citizenry of all genders? Does it become an isolated hermit theocracy? Will its larger and more powerful neighbors leave it alone to develop peacefully? Does it become a failed state of competing narco warlords from different ethnicities?
The Iraq Wars (1990-91 and 2003-11)
Iraq is the ancient Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent, where cities like Sumer, Babylon, Nineveh, and Ur thrived, where great empires like the Assyrians and Babylonians dominated the Middle East and as far south as Egypt and as far west as Cyprus. It includes the Muslim Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, the Christian Assyrians, and many other ancient religions, including Jews, Orthodox Christians, Yazidis and Zoroastrians. It is oil rich and water rich (the Tigris and the Euphrates). It is holy land for both the Sunni and Shia Muslims.
Baghdad had been a great center of Islamic learning and culture. Under Turkish rule, Iraq steadily declined. After the First World War, Mesopotamia became a British protectorate, then had its own King, Faisal I, and achieved independence in 1932. The Iraqi Hashemite monarchy was overthrown in 1958, and the socialist Baath Party took power in a coup d’etat in 1968. They nationalized the oil industry and redistributed land. Iraq enjoyed phenomenal economic growth during the period from 1958 to 1980, and the benefits of growth were extended widely in improved health, education and social programs. Saddam Hussein rose to the pinnacle of power in the Baath Party governing Iraq in 1979. His base of support was among the Sunni Arabs. The Shia Arabs in Southern Iraq and the Sunni Kurds in Northern Iraq were opposed to Hussein.
On Hussein’s orders, Iraq attacked Iran in 1980 shortly after the Islamic Revolution, and the two countries fought to a bloody stalemate over the next eight years. The Gulf Arab countries, Russia, European countries and to a limited degree the US supported Iraq. Syria, North Korea, Libya and to a limited degree the US (arms for hostages and aid to the Nicaraguan contras) supported Iran. Iraq wanted control over the Shatt al Arab, the crucial waterway between the two countries for their oil tankers. Hussein wanted to be the dominant Arab power in the Middle Eastern region. Iraq was controlled by the Sunni Arabs and was secular and socialist. Iran (the ancient Persia) was a newly emergent, Shia theocracy with revolutionary ambitions throughout the Middle East. The war destroyed Iraq’s economy; it was bankrupt afterwards, but it had created a huge army and well-armed military. Iraq used chemical weapons extensively against the Iranian Army, Iranian citizens and Iraqi-Kurdish civilians who were opposed to Hussein.
After that stalemate, there were two more Iraq Wars that involved US Presidents George Bush the elder and the younger.
In the first, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait, its tiny oil-rich neighbor. Iraq was broke and bankrupt from its war with Iran and wanted Kuwait to forgive its debts and reduce its oil drilling so that Iraqi oil would be more profitable. The Kuwaitis refused so Saddam ordered the invasion. The US led by President George Bush the elder assembled a broad and diverse coalition under the aegis of the UN and quickly drove the Iraqis out. That is exactly how the UN should work. President Bush chose not to use the moment to go all the way to Baghdad and remove Hussein. After the war, the Kurds in the North and the Shia in the South revolted, and Saddam slaughtered them, and the US Coalition did not intervene to protect them. However, the US subsequently imposed no fly zones to protect the Kurds and the Shia from Saddam’s Air Force. The Iraqi economy cratered during the two decades of Saddam’s misrule, and the benefits of the oil economy were distributed to the military and Saddam’s wars.
The second Iraq War was a misbegotten adventure of President George Bush the 2nd. The US had been attacked by Al Qaeda on 9/11. It caught the Bush Administration by complete surprise. They lashed out at Afghanistan then at Iraq.
Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, and its leaders wanted to overthrow the Arab governments in the Middle East and replace them with a pan-Arab theologically based Caliphate. Most all were Sunni Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Iraq was secular, and socialist, run by a dictator notorious for massacres of the Kurds in the North and the Shia in the South. It had nothing to do with 9/11.
For opaque reasons, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld decided to invade Iraq claiming it was developing nuclear weapons that would threaten the US, the Middle East and Europe. Iraq not only had had nothing to do with 9/11, but it was not sponsoring terrorist attacks against the US. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration tried to link the nation’s justified outrage about 9/11 to their choice to invade Iraq. There were two problems: the first is that the evidence about nuclear weaponry on Iraq was sketchy, non-existent, or straight out manufactured to justify the war; the second is that the Bush Administration was clueless about how to run Iraq after Saddam was ousted. Essentially, they lied to the American people to start the war; then they ignited a regional/global conflagration by mishandling the occupation. They ignored what was happening in Afghanistan because they had their hands full with what had broken loose in Iraq.
The UK of Tony Blair was supporting the Bush Administration. Most other allied nations such as the French and Germans and Canadians were not buying it. The Congress was gun-shy about the prospect of another terrorist attack after 9/11, and unfortunately it was easily intimidated and bamboozled. Saddam Hussein was his own worst enemy as usual in leading many to conclude that he was trying to hide a nuclear program, that no one could find because it did not exist; he was bluffing.
Why did they do it? The Bush Administration brought to power a group of neo-conservatives who coalesced around the ideas of removing Saddam Hussein, to generate change in the Middle East – the locus of too many wars and great instability in the oil markets. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/world/middleeast/iraq-war-reason.html It brought to power people with deep ties to the US oil industry; the Middle East had most of the world’s oil and was perceived as a volatile tinderbox. It’s still unclear what their precise motives were for invading Iraq and removing Saddam. I think it was the oil, not that they wanted to directly take the oil away from Iraqis, but that they wanted to make the region safe for the petro-states producing the energy that fuels the global economy, and they probably also wanted to open up Iraq’s oil industry to participation by US oil companies.
They intentionally conflated their proposed attack on Iraq, with the issues of Islamic terrorism. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, and the Iranian revolution and the taking of American hostages, that was too easy to do with the American public. The reality however was: 1) Al Qaeda was an enemy seeking the overthrow of the secular rulers of Iraq and Syria, and 2) Iraq and Iran were also mortal enemies, having just fought a bloody war for eight years. Another motivating factor could have been Israeli security. Iraq was not a front-line state with Israel, but it now had a very large, modern, well-armed military, and it had been threatening Israel for many years with Saddam’s bluster.
The US very quickly ousted Saddam, but then it had to run the country, and it made a series of consequential mistakes. As the Bush appointed administrator, Paul Bremer made initial huge mistake, firing all the Baathists, the only ones with experience running the government and the military. He created a Sunni insurgency with lots of skills and experience where there did not need to be one. They also mishandled their relationships with the Shia community as well, so they soon faced two separate insurgencies, one of which was backed by Iran.
The US organized Iraqi elections, but the results of the elections did not (or have not yet) created a unified nation because the Kurds want to be independent, and the Shias and Sunnis each want to run the country to the exclusion of the other. Thus, we ended up with election results which were won by the more populous Shia parties who had for too long been suppressed by the Sunnis and not by leaders who had broad appeal to all three groups.
A bloody sectarian Civil War broke out between the Shias and the Sunnis; then it became a three-way political conflict as the Kurds wanted autonomy or independence. Faced with a weak, poorly functioning central government in Iraq and a chaotic civil war next door in Syria, the ISIS terrorists led by Zarqawi, then Baghdadi took over much of Iraq and Syria. They were stopped on the road to Baghdad only by an unlikely combination of Kurdish peshmerga, the Iranians, the US, the Iraqi Army, the Russians (in Syria), and the Syrian Democratic Forces (in Syria).
Iran has now become a dominant force in Iraqi politics through its surrogate parties and affiliated militias. Peaceful protesters about the government’s failures to improve living conditions are being killed for protesting. https://www.usip.org/iraq-timeline-2003-war The Iraqi people have suffered vastly over the past 40 years of war: first, from Hussein’s misadventures and then from the Bush Administration’s terrible miscalculations and poor performance. The Iraqi economy, however, is now starting to recover after these terrible losses over the course of three wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iraq
Ukraine and Russia (2014-present)
Ukraine is an independent, sovereign nation, a neighbor to Russia, Romania, Moldova, Belorussia and bordering the Black Sea. It is a member of the UN and has been so since its inception. It was a member of the USSR, and along with most of the other soviet republics; it decided to exit when the USSR collapsed in 1991.
Ukraine has among the globe’s most fertile farmland that produces huge shares of the world’s grain, potatoes, and sugar beets. It has large amounts of iron ore and coal in the Donbas region and is a major producer of steel and heavy equipment. It has a massive network of pipelines that transport Russian oil and gas to European customers. It had been a major economic contributor to the development of the other soviet republics in the USSR. Those resources made it an attractive target for Vladimir Putin.
The roots of this conflict date back 1000 years. Ukraine’s capital, Kiev/Kyiv was settled long ago along the river trade routes from Byzantium to the Vikings from Scandinavia. It was the very first major commercial center in what later became the USSR. It was the thriving center of the principality of the Kievan Rus. The Mongols under Genghis Khan sacked and destroyed the city; some of the survivors moved to Moscow and played key roles in the rise of the duchy of Muscovy (Moscow) that was to become the leading city of the Russian Empire. Putin is claiming this common ancestry gives him the right to invade Ukraine.
After the destruction of Kiev, different parts of Ukraine were then ruled by the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and Russians. Crimea was conquered and ruled by the Tatars; it served as the center of the slave trade where Russians and Ukrainians were sold into slavery in the Arab and then the Ottoman Empires. So according to Putin’s logic, the Poles, Lithuanians, Turks and Hungarians also have the right to invade Ukraine as well; instead, they are giving them shelter and refuge from the Russian invasion and in some cases arms to resist it. The residue of bad feelings after the USSR’s dominion after WW II infects the entire Eastern European region.
During the 15th through 18th Centuries, Ukraine developed an early democratic republic, the Cossack Hetmanate, comprised in part of Cossacks, peasants and serfs who had run away from serfdom in Poland and Russia and from slavery in the Ottoman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Cossacks There were elections; there was a written constitution; people had rights and freedoms. These rights and freedoms were unknown, unimaginable, and unheard of in the Russian, Polish and Ottoman Empires surrounding them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_Hetmanate The Hetmanate allied with the Swedish King Charles XII against Peter the Great of Russia, and their combined forces lost at the Battle of Poltova, which destroyed Swedish military power. Sloboda Ukraine was a similar self-governing democracy in the area around what is now Kharkiv. Russia progressively conquered and took over Ukraine. During the reign of Catherine the Great, she fully abolished the rights and autonomy of the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine. The Ukrainian language and culture were suppressed; Russian became the language of the educated urban elite, while Ukrainian remained the language of the peasants, the farms, and small towns.
During the 19th Century, concepts of nationalism and democracy took hold throughout Europe, and there were a series of revolts and revolutions seeking to overthrow and replace the ruling hereditary monarchies with democracies. The nationalist impulses leading to the formation of nations such as Italy and Germany resonated as well in the Balkans and in Ukraine and other parts of the Russian Empire. In part these revolts were inspired by the French and American Revolutions and the Age of Enlightenment, but they also encompassed nationalistic efforts by ethnic minorities systemically oppressed by and seeking freedom from the great, declining Empires of the day. During and after the First World War, the Russian tsars, the Ottoman Emperors, and the Austro-Hungarian Emperors all lost their thrones and in some cases their lives. In all cases but Russia, new liberal democracies replaced the old conservative monarchies. New nations like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Serbia replaced old empires like the Austro-Hungarian. But not all these nascent democracies survived, as some descended into the authoritarian, fascist and murderous regimes such as Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain.
The Russian Revolution was the last of these revolutions, and it established a new untested form of government -- Communism. The revolts of 1848 and 1870 in Europe sought to establish liberal democratic socialism in place of monarchies and of laissez faire capitalism replacing the last vestiges of feudalism. The Industrial Revolution was moving workers from the farms to factories and into big, over-crowded cities with poor living conditions. Socialism was an effort to get governments involved in ameliorating the worst impacts of unchecked capitalism during the Industrial Revolution through regulation of safe working conditions and social programs beginning with universal public education. Democracy allowed the working classes and middle classes to participate in elections to select the government officials that make the decisions that govern their lives.
Russia had been ruled by the dictates of the Tsars and the enforcement of their secret police. Communism as practiced in the USSR posited that the government (not corporations or individuals) owns all the means of production, and that the only permissible political party and political expression is the Communist Party, the party of the people. In the theoretical writings of Marx and Engels, communism would first arise in the heavily industrialized nations of Europe, like England and Germany, not in the most agrarian, least industrialized, and least economically advanced European nation, Russia. For example, in 1861, Russia was the last European country to abolish serfdom, a medieval practice akin to slavery and Southern sharecropper farming in which the serfs were bound to their lords and their landholdings.
Under the theories of Marx and Engels, Communism was to be run by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and this was to be followed by a withering away of the state and the achievement of a utopian society. We have yet to see any withering away of such states. Instead under Stalin, the USSR became a police state of purges, Siberian gulags, tortures, show trials.
The Marxist theory was that Communism was to spread worldwide, starting with worker’s movements in the most advanced industrial states. They endorsed violence to overthrow existing governments and achieve “utopia”.
After the Russians were defeated in 1917, and the Tsar was overthrown in the First World War, Russian Bolsheviks defeated their rivals, the Mensheviks (social democrats), and established a Communist state, based in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The Ukrainians sought to create their own independent, socialist republic during the period from 1918-21. It was overthrown by the Russian Soviet armies, and then it became incorporated as a part of the new USSR.
In the USSR, there were 15 separate socialist republics; each of whom (under the explicit guarantees of the Soviet Constitution) had the right to leave/secede. (Which they all did in 1991, Russia and Ukraine were among the first republics to leave. All embraced some degree of capitalism and some veneer or more of democracy).
Initially, under Lenin, the Communist Party pursued a policy allowing and encouraging the different languages, nationalities, and cultures in the Soviet Union. They also pursued policies that allowed limited free enterprise, which encouraged fast economic growth – the New Economic Policy. This all changed with the death of Lenin and the rise to power of Stalin and the growth of the police state.
USSR under Stalin practiced centralized economic and social planning under directives from Moscow. This led initially to rapid Soviet industrialization and economic growth; then it stagnated without the correctives of economic market incentives to improve price, quality, productivity, and production. Alcoholism, despair, and declines in life expectancy became endemic in the Soviet Union during the late 60s, 70s and 80s. In conjunction with the defeat in Afghanistan, these precipitated the downfall, collapse, and ultimately the dissolution of the USSR.
In Russia, the dictatorship and oppression by the Russian Tsars was replaced by the dictatorship and oppression by the Russian Communist Party, albeit with greater economic equality. This extended to Ukraine and the other Soviet Republics. The autonomy of the Republics and the other autonomous regions which had been built into the Soviet Constitution was curtailed under Stalin, and the local and regional governments became instruments to implement Moscow’s policies as opposed to vibrant and creative voices of the different ethnicities and nationalities within the USSR.
Under Stalin, the USSR sought to collectivize and centrally plan Soviet agriculture, just as it was doing with some success in developing industry. The small and medium sized farmers resisted; the Communist Party leaders brought in the police and the Army to enforce it; it did not work, and 3.5 to 5 million persons starved to death during 1932-33, predominantly in Ukraine, the vital breadbasket of the USSR. This became known as the Holdomor and is considered by the Ukrainians as Stalin’s genocide.
The Second World War broke out in 1939 after Hitler and Stalin agreed to invade and divide up Poland between them. Then in 1941 after victories in France, Hitler invaded Russia. The terrible Russian suffering during the war and their ultimate victory is organic to the governing mythos of the Russian state. It is epitomized in the statute in Volgograd (Stalingrad) of Mother Russia with her sword defending the nation.
Ukraine suffered badly from the Nazi occupation (5-7 million died). Many Ukrainians fought bravely against the Nazis, while others however collaborated and even fought with the Nazis against Stalin. Still others collaborated initially then turned to guerilla warfare against both the German occupation and Stalin. https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Nazi-occupation-of-Soviet-Ukraine Some Ukrainian nationalists, particularly in Western Ukraine became prominent Nazi collaborators and participated with the Nazis in the massacres of Jews at Babi Yar and the killing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany
This betrayal of Russia and the slaughter of Jews by some Ukrainian nationalists during World War II underlies Putin’s lies about his reasons for invading today’s Ukraine. After the end of WW II, an armed rebellion continued against the USSR in the Western Ukraine for at least a decade. Khrushchev was Agriculture Secretary and then General Secretary of the Ukraine during this period when the rebellion of the Ukrainian nationalists was suppressed.
After Stalin’s death and his own rise to power, Khrushchev initially allowed the teaching of the Ukrainian language, the devolution of some decision-making from Moscow to the Regional Soviet Republics, the promotion of Ukrainians to positions of power and responsibility in Ukraine and the USSR, and the release of political prisoners from Stalin’s concentration camps. He also transferred the region of Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Stalin had deported the long-established population of Crimean Tatars (who were Muslims) from Crimea to Siberia at the end of WW II, and then he resettled native Russians to repopulate Crimea.
Russification had been the conscious policy of both the Tsars and Russian Communist Party. Russification included a policy to teach in Russian, to promote Russians to positions of power and responsibility, and to resettle Russians into each of the 15 distinct Republics. It suppressed the native local languages, cultures, and history of the regions. This had been the policy of the Poles, the Habsburgs, and the Russian empire, and it had always provoked wide and strong Ukrainian opposition and resistance. Those Ukrainians, who aspired under the Tsars and the Communist Party to advance, learned Russian and adopted the Russian culture.
The USSR comprised 15 separate Republics which were defined in part by their distinct ethnic populations. Uzbeks lived in Uzbek SSR; Lithuanians lived in Lithuania SSR; Kirghiz lived in Kirgiz SSR, and Russians in Russian SSR. Under the Constitution of the USSR, each of the 15 Republics was entitled to secede and form a separate independent state. Ukrainian nationalists wanted to use their own language, learn their own history, practice their own culture, occupy positions of power and responsibility, and they wanted decision-making to devolve from Moscow to Ukraine. During the post Stalinist period, they were not as interested in their independence as before the war or from the 80’s forward.
The two most important post Khrushchev leaders of the Ukraine during this time frame had radically different policies. The first favored and promoted Ukrainization in all spheres of life; his successor promoted Russification. Under the first, enrollment in the Ukrainian Communist Party soared. Under the second, dissenting voices and journals were suppressed; dissidents were imprisoned; Communist Party membership declined, and eventually the whole Soviet economy tanked. https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/Ukraine-under-Shcherbytsky Then the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl melted down and caused an enormous, long lasting environmental catastrophe in the North of Ukraine.
Not long after Chernobyl, the Soviet Union (USSR) dissolved, with each of the 15 constituent Republics choosing independence. The collapse of the Soviet Empire was totally unexpected. The economy had been in bad shape for several decades; the arms race with the US was consuming too high a percent of Soviet GDP, leaving little to no room for other important investments; life expectancy was falling, and alcoholism was endemic. The defeat of Soviet Armies in Afghanistan, and the threats of rising Islamic fundamentalism in regions with restive Muslim leaders added to the challenges of keeping the USSR intact. The Communist Party had had a monopoly on political power; it could not reform itself nor be replaced although President Gorbachev tried mightily to do so.
The Ukrainian Parliament declared independence on August 24, 1991. Ninety percent of the voters voted for and approved independence on December 1. It was expected at the time that Ukraine would be the most successful of the Republics in transitioning economically and politically.
All 15 republics embraced democracy to some extent, and each sought to introduce a degree of market capitalism, while jettisoning communism, in order to jump start their economies. But in some the leaders stayed the same; they just changed their party labels. So, there were differing degrees of change. For example, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia promptly joined the EU and NATO to safely distance themselves from Russia. Others such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia now wish they had, and they tried to do so, but NATO was reluctant due to the anticipated Russian reaction.
Russia and Ukraine were joint founders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Russia’s efforts to create an EU/NATO like system for the 12 remaining republics. Ukraine agreed to give up all its nuclear weapons (it had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world), and the US, Russia and the UK by treaty guaranteed its independence and territorial integrity from attack. After these promising starts of cooperation, how did we get to the point that Russia has invaded Ukraine, is committing extensive war crimes, killing civilians, and is destroying its towns and cities?
There are several reasons: number one is Vladimir Putin, his visions and his persona, and number two is the very different aspirations of the two neighbors. Ukraine wants to join the EU and NATO and have a European style democracy, and it has also wanted good relations with Putin’s Russia, that desperately does not want it to join the EU and certainly not NATO. Ukrainian politicians and election voters have tried for three decades to straddle these two incompatible goals, leaning sometimes more towards the EU, and other times more towards Russia.
Russia (now half the population of the old USSR) under Putin seeks to recreate the scope of Imperial Russia or the Soviet Union under Russian leadership in the CIS, and it has been willing to use great force on its neighbors to bring that about. Russia under Putin is reverting to autocracy and the imprisonment, poisoning, defenestration and murder of the opposition, the same type of creeping police state that was prevalent under Stalin and the Tsars.
Putin has already invaded portions of Georgia and Moldova. When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, he was successful in taking over Crimea and portions of Eastern Ukraine. During the Trump Administration, US-Russia relations warmed, and Trump sought to weaken and delay Congressionally approved aid to the Ukrainians. His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had managed the political campaigns of Putin’s man in the Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, as well. Well known Trump fans like George Santos, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson have now become Putin fans as well. There are rump elements of the GOP who have become Putin fans.
As compared to Ukraine, Russia is far larger, has many more resources, a much larger military, and a history of success in using its armed forces. After his earlier successes, Putin grossly miscalculated the extent of resistance his armed forces would face in 2022 from the Ukrainians, from the NATO members, and from the US. He certainly expected that invading Ukraine and installing (reinstalling) a compliant leader would be readily accomplished.
As in the Tsarist past, Russia does not want a strong neighbor with a vibrant democracy, a growing economy, and alliances with its “enemies” (in the US and Europe) on its Southern doorstep. Putin is now entering into a no-win quagmire; he has committed lots of troops and lost lots of Russian lives. If he were to win militarily, Putin’s Russia faces decades of guerilla warfare and implacable, violent resistance on its borders; he has united nearly all the diverse Ukrainian factions from far left to far right against him. If Russia loses, Putin likely loses power; maybe he goes on trial for his war crimes, and Russia becomes a very different kind of state. What kind is not discernible or knowable at this time. Putin’s best bet is a negotiated settlement restoring the status quo ante (2013 or 2021?); he may be using China as his interlocutor since his credibility is utterly destroyed; four American Presidents have started their terms trying to work with him to little or no avail. A negotiated settlement acceptable to Putin and Zelensky may not be possible as Ukraine is now extremely highly motivated to join NATO for its future security and the EU for its economic future, and NATO and the EU have rarely been this united in perceiving and reacting to Putin’s aggression within Europe’s borders. Ukraine’s economy is in tatters, its citizen’s homes destroyed, and its infrastructure badly damaged. But its resilience seems to be unbowed. There will need to be a huge and generous rebuilding effort. Russia is relying on prisoner releases to shore up its own tattered army; western sanctions have not impacted Russia’s economy sufficiently to force it to relent. Its ally, China, has not yet put Putin on notice of his need to step back from this aggression. Ukraine may be able to make sufficient gains on the battlefield that the end game becomes obvious and inescapable even to Putin’s inner circle. This is a long uphill struggle ahead for Ukraine to build the kind of economy, governance, and relationships its people so deeply desire; however, they really have no other choice as they are unwilling to again become a vassal state of Putin, Moscow, and Russia.