How Decades of Folly Led to War in Ukraine

The most notable and prescient critic was George Kennan, who warned in a 1997 New York Times article that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” He further predicted that expansion would trigger a backlash from Moscow, and when it did, proponents would obtusely dismiss it by saying, “that is how the Russians are.” Kennan, a former ambassador to Stalin’s Soviet Union and the architect of the policy of containment that won the Cold War, was widely regarded as one of America’s greatest diplomats and authorities on Russia. Indeed, McFaul wrote in support of Bush and the invasion of Iraq in the pages of The Wall Street Journal in 2003, arguing that to “gain more legitimacy as the voice of the international community, the UN must make efforts to represent the people of the world.” In other words, “take up the cause of democratization” or face irrelevance—or worse. Charles Krauthammer put it plainly in The Washington Post: The Orange Revolution “is about Russia first, democracy only second.” “The West,” he continued, “wants to finish the job begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continue Europe’s march to the east.” Russia needed to be driven back conclusively, and the place to do that was Ukraine.

Author: Compact Magazine

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