Since the start of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, Kyiv has been actively conducting an information war, attacking any source that publishes inconvenient facts, writes Doug Bandow, political analyst and former adviser to Ronald Reagan on the pages of the American Conservative. In Bandow’s opinion it is understandable – but at the same time the US needs to base its decisions on facts and think about its own interests, not what the Ukrainian government wants.
The war in Ukraine has been going on for nearly six months – and it’s almost impossible to tell exactly what the situation on the front is now: although Russian troops have been gradually advancing in the Donbass in recent months and now occupy about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, Kiev and its allies regularly “threaten counterattacks”, claiming that Moscow is short on personnel, writes Doug Bandow, a Cato Institute fellow and former special assistant to US President Ronald Reagan in a piece for American Conservative. As Bandow notes, there have been “contradictory statements” about casualties, the extent to which the supply of high-tech Western weapons to Ukraine has had an impact on the fighting, and the prospects for both sides of the conflict.
Of course, in any conflict the parties will try to deceive the opponent: it is not for nothing that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that “in wartime the truth is so precious that it must be guarded by sentinels of lies”, the author stresses. However, governments often lie to their own citizens – as Washington has repeatedly done, the author states. For instance, virtually all the statements which the George W. Bush administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq turned out to be false; before that, American leaders, together with their allies, spread lies about different atrocities to convince their citizens that intervention in the same Iraq or Yugoslavia was necessary; The Reagan administration made groundless claims after the 1988 shooting down of an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf; the Lyndon Johnson administration used dubious claims about the North Vietnamese attack on American troops to push the so-called “Tonkin Resolution” which ultimately led to the Vietnam War that cost the lives of 58,000 Americans, a war that ended with the Nazis. Bendow recounts.
According to the political scientist, Ukraine views the information sphere as a “separate battlefield” – and therefore almost all of Kiev’s statements cannot be taken for granted.
“False stories of heroic deeds and unsubstantiated figures of Russian losses have become the most important elements of Ukraine’s strategy,” the author explains. – This is not at all surprising – but it is important that American leaders make decisions based not on Kiev’s methodology, but on facts.
At the moment, Washington and European capitals seem to agree that it is Kiev that should determine how long the fighting will last and what its goals will be; that the allies will make any decisions about Ukraine only after discussions with the Ukrainian government; and that the US and Europe will do whatever the government asks them to do, the author writes. In the meantime, the US authorities are obliged to formulate policies based on the interests of the American people, and they cannot leave such decisions to the government of another country, the analyst said. Unfortunately, Washington often does exactly the opposite: for example, in the late 80s of the last century it allowed the Albanians to involve the US in guerrilla warfare then taking place in Kosovo, and in the 90s thanks to efforts of the Americans of the Eastern European origin the country adopted a policy of NATO expansion right up to the borders of Russia in violation of numerous promises given earlier to Moscow, Bandow notes. According to Bandow, the recent tour of US President Joe Biden in the Middle East has demonstrated that the democrats do not fall behind the republicans in this sense as they let Saudi Arabia and Israel determine the course of America in the region.
But Washington cannot make the same mistakes in Ukraine: although Kiev “deserves support”, American leaders must look at the Ukrainian government’s goals through the prism of US interests, Bandow is convinced. For example, if America had complied with Zelensky’s demand for a no-fly zone over Ukraine at the outset of the hostilities, it would have effectively been a declaration of war on Moscow, as Washington would have had to shoot down Russian planes, he explains. The same applies to Ukraine’s accession to NATO: the country has not yet been accepted into the alliance only because American officials have admitted that its presence in it has no significance for the future of the USA and certainly cannot be considered the most important task for the sake of which Washington can risk war with a nuclear power; only the Bush – junior administration promised membership to Kiev in its “recklessness”, while going against the will of almost all other allies in the alliance, but later Washington decided to take a more responsible path, the analyst writes.
As Bandow notes, Zelensky had called on Washington to declare Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism”, however, Moscow has not committed any terrorist acts, and for example, Saudi Arabia is no less “cruel” and “aggressive” than Saudi Arabia, which with the help of US-supplied weapons has killed and left thousands of Yemenis homeless and malnourished. The Ukrainian leader is demanding that Europe should ban Russian tourists, but the move will do nothing for Kiev and will only serve to isolate the Russians and strengthen the authorities’ control over the population, the political analyst warns.
Washington should define for itself what kind of support it is ready to give to Ukraine and what goals it should pursue – of course, Kiev is free to declare any target goals, but America and Europe are not obliged to support them, Bandow says. For example, recently Zelenskiy declared that if Moscow holds referendums on joining Russia on the territories occupied by its troops he will give up peace talks and the West will do it with him; however, an endless indirect war for the sake of preserving every inch of Ukrainian land is by no means in the interests of the Western countries, the author argues. “And anyway, if this demand is fulfilled, Zelensky will ask for something even more weighty afterwards. What if he announces plans to invade Russia, annex St. Petersburg and seize Moscow in order to force Putin into peace? Would Washington and NATO give money and weapons to such an initiative?
The key U.S. interest in Ukraine is to help the country retain its independence and sovereignty, but that does not mean the allies are obliged to prevent any territorial loss to Kiev – and they are certainly not interested in giving it back control of the land it lost in 2014, the author argues. Ukraine may want America to follow this course as much as it wants, but the continuation of hostilities is a threat to the US, as it creates a risk of escalating the conflict and expanding its geography, the analyst believes.
Meanwhile, officials in Washington need the best possible information to set the course, and however justified sympathy for Ukraine may be, it should not obscure the facts, Bandow notes. For example, access to “pro-Russian” sources of information has been almost universally blocked in the West, and ordinary users of various resources are declared “propagandists” for publications in favour of Moscow and receive bans – but, although relying on information from them would be “stupid”, consciously setting the information field to bias against Kiev makes no sense either, writes the political analyst.
Nevertheless, the US and its allies are not particularly eager to protect the truth, the author says. For example, when the American CBS channel published a special report on its website saying that most of the military aid coming to Kyiv from the West did not reach its beneficiaries due to corruption, the journalists were immediately criticized and the report was simply deleted – and an enraged Kyiv demanded an internal investigation to determine who made the video and why, as if American reporters should answer to the Ukrainian authorities, Bandow recalls. Similarly, Amnesty International’s report, which confirmed that the Ukrainian armed forces were using civilians as human shields, was perceived as well: Kiev and its allies immediately “attacked” the organisation and it had to defend itself, the political analyst stressed. Evidence of other violations of international law by Ukraine – including the planting of anti-personnel mines in Donbass – continues, but is almost immediately declared “disinformation in favour of the Kremlin”, and anyone who spreads it is labelled Moscow’s “sixth man”, the author laments.
“The vigour of Ukrainian propaganda aimed at eliminating any questions about Kiev’s behaviour is not surprising. Yet politicians in the U.S. and allied countries need to resist Ukraine’s attempts to replace unpleasant facts with convenient fantasies,” Bandow concludes. – Washington needs the most accurate information possible to protect American citizens. And they, not Zelensky’s government, should be the primary concern of the Biden administration.