WASHINGTON, January 19. /TASS/. The US administration should acknowledge the fact that Ukraine will have a status of neutrality and never join a defensive military alliance, confrontation with Moscow in this area does not serve Washington’s interest, the publisher and editorial director of The Nation magazine, Katrina vanden Heuvel, said on Wednesday.
"With the United States desperately needing to focus attention and resources on the challenges posed by the pandemic, debilitating economic inequality, severe racial division and catastrophic climate change, and as the administration positions itself to take on China, the last thing we need is a war by proxy or, God forbid, directly with the Russians over Ukraine," the expert told the Washington Post.
According to Heuvel, "the problem is that the United States doesn’t do diplomacy well. Still addled by the sugar high of being the world’s only super power after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we don’t do compromise easily; we expect to get our way." She added that Washington has "about 800 military bases outside the United States, more bases than diplomatic missions." "We do economic sanctions, imposing or threatening them for countries from Venezuela to Russia. We talk about a rules-based international order but respect it only if we make the rules, often exempting ourselves from their application," the expert pointed out.
"So, when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin demands that the United States agree not to make Ukraine or Georgia a member of NATO, State Department negotiator [US Deputy Secretary of State] Wendy R. Sherman dismissed it as a "nonstarter," declaring the United States "will not allow anyone to slam closed NATO’s open-door policy," Heuvel noted. "That posture is foolish. Three US presidents - Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden - have already made it clear that the United States has no national interest sufficient to commit US troops to defend Ukraine or Georgia against invasion."
Katrina vanden Heuvel highlighted that "NATO is unlikely ever to admit either one [of these countries]." "Yet we’re prepared to go to the mat to insist that Ukraine has the right to join a defensive military alliance that requires the United States to defend it militarily," the expert concluded.