Ukraine: The place of the distant voices

That we should critique and question the conventional, and also western wisdom on the actualities of the war in Ukraine has been taken out of commonsense by what I call the narrative supremacy of the USA and its European allies. 

Such voices as that of one Professor John Mearsheimer, and lately and surprisingly, Henry Kissinger, that question western political dogma and observe that it is NATO expansion into Eastern Europe that has caused the unfortunate conflict are peripherised into what legendary journalist, John Pilger, called dissenting and “distant voices.” Much forcefully, the western academy and media have conducted successful “manufacture of consent” in shaping world popular opinion against Russia as a polity and an economy, and Vladimir Putin as a leader. 

To question the mainstream western doxa on the war in Ukraine is a serious task of cutting against a heavy grain and the force of narrative power,  privilege and monopoly that the Euro-American Empire has amassed over the decades from 1945 to the present. 

The monopoly of commonsense and the privilege to decide and convince the world on what is right and wrong in world affairs is what I called the Euro-American ‘weapons of mass-deception.’ The power of Euro-American weapons of mass-deception’ makes the voices of the dissidents, the ‘distant voices’ in Europe and America itself even more important for their courage and power to swim against the tides. 

How the West created the war in Ukraine 

More than 15 years ago, Professor John Mearsheimer, an American political scientist and international relations scholar gave an alarming and also unpopular warning to the United States of America and its European allies. The University of Chicago scholar noted that the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe existentially threated Russia and will eventually lead to a large-scale war that will be difficult to end as multiple countries in different parts of the world will take adversarial and complicated political and military positions. Mearsheimer’s chilling but perceptive observation and warning has come to life on Ukrainian soil and the whole world is feeling the economic vibrations of the war that continues to escalate by each day. 

The West, Mearsheimer observes, wanted to peel Ukraine away from Russia into the NATO alliance in order to use the country as a western bulwark on Russian borders. Russia on the other end saw the westernisation of Ukraine as NATO ‘barking in Russian gates,’ in the words of Pope Francis. The US assisted 2014 change in Ukraine, a change that was covered up as popular protests, led to the removal of a leader that Russia trusted and replaced him with a pro-western and pro-NATO leader that Russia does not trust.

Mearsheimer explodes the myth that President Putin wants to rebuild Great Russia and build a Tsarist Republic. What Russia fears is a NATO Ukraine and what it desires is neutral Ukraine that poses no threat to Russia economically and politically. That Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, brick by brick by invading and annexing former Soviet Republics is a fiction and a myth of western narrative supremacy and propaganda, suggests Mearsheimer, who believes that presently the US followed by its allies are “leading Ukraine in a path of destruction.”

 Militarily, Ukraine has been made a defactor NATO member as the US and its NATO allies pump in weapons, money, mercenaries and urge Ukraine to fight on “to the last Ukrainian” while the country is literally getting demolished. Ukraine could have prevented the war by remaining neutral and keeping peace with the West and Russia at the same time, and not agree to be used by one side against the other. 

The West created the war in Ukraine through NATO expansionism, European Union imperialism and the Orange Revolution of 2014 in Ukraine which the US backed, if not created, in the name of spreading democracy to the “ends of the earth.

” Spreading democracy to the dark corners of the world is the grand myth that the Euro-American Empire has used as an excuse for its regime change agendas in the world. For that reason, Mearsheimer believes the USA and allies have created a “remarkably foolish war” in Ukraine, a war that will be difficult to end as all the warring parties are doubling down and are not even imagining the possibility of losing the war. This is now an existential war where death is better than defeat. 

The war to the End of the World 

Mearsheimer is rooted in the political and philosophical school of realism that is contemptuous of moral reasoning in political thinking and decision making.  He states categorically that the world has never been this close to nuclear war. Russia will ensure victory by an means necessary while the US and NATO allies will not allow Ukraine to lose, and that is the imbroglio that will lead to tragic escalation. Mearsheimer ‘predicts’ the possibility of an ‘accident’ in Russia or in any NATO country that might suddenly lead to a direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO countries, a war that will inevitably turn nuclear.

A country not of their own 

On 1 April 2022, on Fools Day, Francis Fukuyama published in the Foreign Affairs journal an article that described the patriotism of Ukranians who were willing to kill and die for “a country of their own.” Mearsheimer exposes just how false that is. Ukraine, before the war, was a corrupt, unstable and dangerously divided country where there is allegedly a law, passed after 2014, which bans the language rights of some sections of society. 

What the world has been made to believe that a sovereign democratic state, and innocent country, is being defended from the Russian anti-Christ is a pretty but totally false picture, Mearsheimer suggests. 

The tragedy is that innocent Ukrainians are dying in numbers in a war that could have been avoided. The realist that he is, Mearsheimer will not have us believe that there are any total angels and total devils in politics. The captivity of Ukraine to far right movements, some of them openly neo-Nazi, alongside political pressure from the US and allies will not help the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. 

The double-captivity of Ukraine, to the West and to internal right wing political outfits, makes Ukraine the opposite of what Fukuyama told us on Fools Day. It is not a country of their own, the Ukrainians, but it is a country in captivity to powers and forces that Mearsheimer says have “taken away the agency” of the nation-state and replaced it with subjection.

Such distant voices,  as that of Professor Mearsheimer and lately Henry Kissinger, are not given legitimacy in the politically correct and narrative supremacist western media and academy. 

ν Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].