Ukraine remains in the headlines. Russia has 100,000+ troops and materiel on the border. On cue, the curtain on the ballet goes up. Experts (self-professed and real) divine Putin’s intentions. The US does the two-step: concern that an invasion may come soon, and signals to Russia of “grave consequences” if it invades. And the press, sniffing clicks and profits, lubricates the gears to heighten the public’s there-could-be-shooting! excitement.
Excitement sells, the prospect of war more so. For that reason, mainstream US media do not suffer from expertise on the wheres, whens, and whys of Ukraine or even Russia. What they do know is that the American public loves generals, and that it’s plain convenient to give an uncritical platform to Pentagon brass for pronouncements on the geopolitical dilemma du jour. Skepticism is hard work; few journalists have time for it, and customers don’t like it.
It’s also not news that, when we refer to senior military leaders at the Pentagon, we’re talking politician, not warrior. They’ve not seen a foxhole or cleaned a rifle in decades. Their only battles are with one another for the plum jobs and with Congress — ever ready to bow before ribbons and medals — over bigger budgets. Limousined and ‘coptered around town, they encounter neither traffic jams nor people not kissing their uniformed ass.
American generals exploit this even if they’re ignorant of how, exactly, this or that media person alleged to be practicing journalism gets assigned to “parrot duty” at the Pentagon. They do know that a crucial element of that job is to spread uncritically whatever they deign to share with a taxpaying and, admittedly, willfully gullible public that sees uniforms as conveying a credibility unstained by sordid politics.
History disagrees, not that the public cares. This has let military leaders, like all politicians, perfect the intricacies of the Great American Wheel of Bullshit with its three spokes: the leaders, the led, and the disseminators. The leaders tell the led what the led want to hear (keeping the relevant stuff out of sight lest the led ask awkward questions); and the disseminators help the leaders sell the message. Marketing monkeys call this “win-win”.
The current head of the parade, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, offers the latest example of Military Industrial Complex-meets-Infotainment Complex. Milley, the politician-in-uniform who showed up in combat fatigues for Trump’s photo op in Lafayette Square in 2020 (a stunt Milley said — after Trump lost — he regretted), has embarked on a mission to lecture the public about “assumptions” made by our “enemies”.
On Ukraine, one of Milley’s recurring stenographers is Demetri Sevastopulo, Washington correspondent of the Financial Times. He dutifully transcribes for us what Milley and other generals have said, but his reporting on Russia’s intimidation of Ukraine leaves two important questions: what compels Russia to move substantial offensive combat capabilities toward its border with Ukraine? And why now?
Sevastopulo’s silence on these points suggests that, whatever Putin is up to, it has nothing to do with the actions of Ukraine, the US, the EU, or NATO. Intentionally or not, Sevastopulo leads the news consumer to infer that Putin has always intended to invade Ukraine because he thinks it is (should be) a part of Russia, and is manufacturing this latest crisis in order to distract the Russian public from a poor economy and COVID.
This unidimensional it’s-all-Putin’s-fault narrative opens the second act, which starts with the US president’s pirouetting between not saying exactly what Ukraine wants to hear — Americans will defend Ukraine militarily — and threatening Russia with unspecified consequences. His audience, of course, is the American public and single-brainwave Republicans like Senator Cotton (Biden “speak[s] loudly and carr[ies] a twig”).
Re-enter Milley, who warns “America’s adversaries not to assume that the [US] was weak or unwilling to take military action to defend its interests in the wake of its withdrawal from Afghanistan”. They should not be complacent or make faulty assumptions about US resolve. Noted. Presumably, the adversaries are Russia and China and it is they who deem the US weak.
Sevastopulo goads: “Critics have argued that US rivals interpreted the Afghan exit and lack of appetite for conflict after two decades of war”. But who are these critics? According to the link he provides, they’re none other than Milley and other US generals. An exercise in projection: it is military leaders warning about assumptions (“weakness and lack of appetite for conflict”) who do the assuming. And the inbred circular narrative is born.
That, rather than a useful elucidation of the intricate Ukraine/Russia dynamic, is the aim. To be plausible, a link between the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russian threats to invade Ukraine would need cause-and-effect evidence from the Russian side. One can argue that that’s something we can never know, but that there could be such a link in Putin’s mind, while true, is pure unsourced speculation.
Which leaves us with inferences. Fair enough, but at least make them reasonable ones. When handicapping the odds, wouldn’t Moscow see US military involvement in Ukraine more likely with Washington no longer distracted by Afghanistan? And hasn’t Moscow parsed American rhetoric, which never committed the US to defending Ukraine militarily, be it before, during, or after the Afghanistan project?
Ultimately, missing from media reports on Ukraine is the Russian perspective. Might Moscow’s claims of evidence — based on a leaky Ukrainian government — that Kyiv planned to move militarily against insurrectionists in Donbas be legitimate despite Ukrainian denials? Or that Ukraine was creating closer operational (vs. rhetorical) ties to NATO even without formal membership? Either negates assumptions of American weakness as Russia’s motive.
None of this is to argue Russian claims that Ukraine or even NATO is, objectively, a threat to Russian national security or that anything said by Putin can be taken at face value. But for the US and the West to design their own fact-based policies supported by the public, a fuller picture is essential. Russia may indeed invade Ukraine in early 2022, but if it does, it will have nothing to do with American generals and their parrots.
