[Advocates of "peace now" in Ukraine would do well to listen to
what Ukrainian and Russian progressives have to say. ]
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THE SURPRISING PERVASIVENESS OF AMERICAN ARROGANCE  
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John Feffer
May 24, 2023
Foreign Policy in Focus
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_ Advocates of "peace now" in Ukraine would do well to listen to what
Ukrainian and Russian progressives have to say. _

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Henry Kissinger is arrogant. At 100 years old, he still represents all
that is smug and imperious about U.S. foreign policy. Donald Trump and
his fellow denizens of the far right project the same vibe with their
MAGA madness.

A similar strain of American arrogance can even be found among
liberals, the ones who believe that Washington possesses all the
answers. Think of Madeleine Albright and her comments about the
indispensability of the United States. “If we have to use force, it
is because we are America,” the former secretary of state in the
Clinton administration said back in 1998
[[link removed]]. “We are
the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other
countries into the future.”

Such comments are risible, particularly in hindsight after the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Albright was obviously looking in a
funhouse mirror that reflected back an image of America as a
basketball center rather than what it so frequently is: an ostrich
with its head in the ground.

Okay, none of this is news. Hubris and its consequences: this subtitle
can be applied to pretty much any book about American foreign policy
since the late nineteenth century.

But here’s the surprising part. Americans on the left can be just as
blinkered and arrogant as all the figures further to the right that
we’ve criticized repeatedly for the same sins.

So, for instance, a broad assortment of pundit-activists from Noam
Chomsky to Jeffrey Sachs
[[link removed]] have
staked out what they consider “pro-peace” or “diplomatic” or
“progressive” positions on the war in Ukraine. In open
letters, _New York Times_ advertisements, and countless
blogs/podcasts/tweets, they have supported “peace now” against the
position held by 65 percent of Americans
[[link removed]] of
supporting Ukrainians in the defense of their country.

Here I’m not particularly interested in debating this subclass of
leftists on their interpretations of the origins of the current war,
which I’ve challenged elsewhere (for instance on the role played by
NATO expansion [[link removed]] or
the notion that what happened in 2014 in Kyiv was a “coup”
[[link removed]]).

I’m more interested in two linked aspects of this position. First,
these pundit-activists have not bothered to consult the victims in
this conflict. They show no evidence of talking with Ukrainians,
reading Ukrainian analyses, or taking into account Ukrainian
perspectives. Imagine a journalist who interviews Donald Trump about
accusations that he raped a woman but doesn’t bother to talk to the
woman who made the accusation. That would violate all the rules of
journalism (not to mention common decency). And yet the victims of
Russia’s war get no hearing from a group of pundit-activists who
have otherwise specialized in standing up for victims (for instance,
of American wars).

Second, these pundit-activists believe, with Albright, that America is
the indispensable nation in this conflict, that it has the power to
force a ceasefire, negotiate a peace, and remake the European security
order. This naïve belief in the power of American empire flows from a
mistaken understanding of the role the United States has played in
Ukraine (that it stage-managed the “coup” in 2014, that it has
single-handedly blocked potential peace negotiations since the
invasion last year).

According to this argument, even if the United States used its
preponderant power for “evil” in the past, it can turn around like
a super villain that has seen the light and use this preponderant
power for “good.” In this way, a false reading of the past
produces nonsense policy recommendations today.

But let’s take a closer look at these two varieties of arrogance and
how they have managed to infect the American left.

THE LIVES OF UKRAINIANS

In an interview
[[link removed]] with _The
New Statesman_ last month, Noam Chomsky outlined his views on
Ukraine. As a longtime admirer of Chomsky, I was frankly dismayed at
his comments. He repeats several debunked canards, for instance, that
the United States and UK (not Russia or even Ukraine) have blocked
peace negotiations.

And he adds some new ones into the mix. Russia, he argues, is acting
with greater restraint in Ukraine than the United States did in the
Iraq War. It’s hard to come to that conclusion after looking at
pictures of the destruction of Mariupol and Bakhmut or reading of
Russia’s destruction of 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy
infrastructure. Chomsky also dismisses Sweden and Finland’s entrance
into NATO as having nothing to do with a fear of Russian attack.
Russia may indeed have no intention or capacity to attack either
country, but there is no question that Swedes and Finns worry about
the prospect of invasion (or cyberattack).

Of course, like many other supposed iconoclasts on this issue, Chomsky
prefaces many of his statements by noting that Russia committed a
crime by invading Ukraine before going on to whittle away at Russian
responsibility for the war. It’s all too reminiscent of the
American right’s whitewashing of U.S. history
[[link removed]].
Yes, the authors of the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum will concede, land
was stolen from the Native Americans and slavery was “barbarous and
tyrannical.” But by glossing over the particulars of those crimes,
right-wing revisionists miss the centrality of violence in early
American history in their eagerness to make their ideological points.
So, too, do left-wing revisionists soft-pedal Russian imperialism in
their rush to condemn the perfidy of the United States.

What is obvious from the interview, however, is that Chomsky hasn’t
talked to any Ukrainians to test his hypotheses or his conclusions. He
hasn’t even talked with the Ukrainian translator of his works. That
translator, Artem Chapeye, had this to say
[[link removed]] last
year after the Russian invasion.

_I started as a volunteer translator of “The Responsibility of
Intellectuals” into Ukrainian—now I’m aghast at how you mention,
in one sentence, the lead-up to this invasion: “What happened in
2014, whatever one thinks of it, amounted to a coup with US support
that… led Russia to annex Crimea, mainly to protect its sole
warm-water port and naval base,” Chomsky said…Before
“overthrowing capitalism,” try thinking of ways for us Ukrainians
not to be slaughtered, because “any war is bad.” I beg you to
listen to the local voices here on the ground, not some sages sitting
at the center of global power. Please start your analysis with the
suffering of millions of people, rather than geopolitical chess moves.
Start with the columns of refugees, people with their kids, their
elders and their pets. Start with those kids in cancer hospital in
Kyiv who are now in bomb shelters missing their chemotherapy._

Before making proposals about negotiations and peace, the advocates of
such positions should stop talking and listen to peace groups in
Ukraine. They might profitably begin by consulting a recent statement
by Ukrainian NGOs called a Ukraine Peace Appeal
[[link removed]]:

_We, Ukrainian civil society activists, feminists, peacebuilders,
mediators, dialogue facilitators, human rights defenders and
academics, recognise that a growing strategic divergence worldwide has
led to certain voices, on the left and right and amongst pacifists to
argue for an end to the provision of military support to Ukraine. They
also call for an immediate cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia as
the strategy for “ending the war”. These calls for negotiation
with Putin without resistance are in reality calls to surrender our
sovereignty and territorial integrity._

American peace activists might even consult with Russian anti-war
activists who have sided at great personal cost with
[[link removed]] Ukrainian
victims against their own government. Listen, for instance, to Boris
Kagarlitsky
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long staked out a lonely, independent left position in Russia:

_from the Western progressive public, we only need one thing – stop
helping Putin with your conciliatory and ambiguous statements. The
more often such statements are made, the greater will be the
confidence of officials, deputies and policemen that the current order
can continue to exist with the silent support or hypocritical
grumbling of the West. Every conciliatory statement made by liberal
intellectuals in America results in more arrests, fines, and searches
of democratic activists and just plain people here in Russia. We do
not need any favor but a very simple one: an understanding of the
reality that has developed in Russia today. Stop identifying Putin and
his gang with Russia._

But in their utterly parochial presumptuousness, those Americans who
support “peace now” only consult themselves.

IN PRAISE OF U.S. INDISPENSABILITY

On May 11, after Donald Trump appeared in a lie-filled extravaganza on
CNN, peace activist Medea Benjamin tweeted
[[link removed]] in
response to a _Wall Street Journal_ clip from the Town Hall:
“Watch: Trump Says as President He’d Settle Ukraine War Within 24
hours. “It’s not about winning or losing but about stopping the
killing.” YES! I wish Democrats would start saying this!”

So, after repeatedly demonstrating against Trump’s lies for four
years, how can the Code Pink activist suddenly turn around and accept
on face value something so outlandish from the mouth of the
ex-president? Like so many of Trump’s utterances, this one is pure
boast. Trump couldn’t “settle” the war even if he wanted to do
so. After all, he has a pretty sorry track record in this regard,
having not settled any wars when he was president (North Korea) and
having threatened to launch a few of his own
[[link removed]] (Iran, Venezuela)
during the same period.

But the issue here is not Trump’s mendacity. It’s the willingness
of the credulous to believe that an American president can swoop in
and stop a war in 24 hours. The war in Ukraine wasn’t started by the
United States and it won’t be finished by the United States. That
role belongs to Russia, which will either withdraw voluntarily, be
forced to withdraw, or (very improbably) beat Ukraine into submission.

A similarly naïve belief in U.S. indispensability can be found in a
full-page ad l
[[link removed]]ast
week in _The New York Times_ sponsored by the Eisenhower Media
Network [[link removed]], a group of
former U.S. military and intelligence officers funded by Ben Stein
[[link removed]],
of Ben & Jerry’s fame. These military influencers have obviously had
second thoughts about their former jobs, which were all about the use
of force to achieve national goals. But in one way, at least, they are
consistent: they remain singularly obsessed with American power.

Their statement reads in part: “As Americans and national security
experts, we urge President Biden and Congress to use their full power
to end the Russia-Ukraine War speedily through diplomacy, especially
given the grave dangers of military escalation that could spiral out
of control.”

Well, that sounds sort of reasonable. Except that it assumes that the
United States has that power. Certainly, Washington is helping to
sustain the war—i.e., prevent Russia from visiting more atrocities
on the Ukrainian population—by delivering weapons to Kyiv. Does that
mean, then, that the United States should stop sending weapons,
pressure Ukraine to make concessions at the negotiating table, and
accept a deal where the victims lose territory, get no compensation
from the aggressor for their losses, and continue to fear future
attacks because membership in NATO is off the table?

Is that what these former military and intelligence officials mean by
“full power”? It still comes down to a belief that the United
States is the only country that can cut the Gordian knot of
geopolitics because, again, it is the indispensable power. Strip away
the pretty language of diplomacy and the sad truth emerges: once the
agents of American power, always the agents of American power.

FOREVER ARROGANT?

Perhaps it is the fate of Americans to be arrogant, regardless of
where we stand on the political spectrum. Such is the side effect of
privilege. We Americans are all beneficiaries of exceptionalism, even
those of us who decry its corrosive impact.

I’m not immune. I have long argued that the United States can play a
positive role in the world. I have urged the United States to champion
human rights, democratic practice, economic equality, and climate
justice. But I’m also acutely aware that the United States has
rarely done any of these things. And I’m sensitive to the criticism,
often from the Global South, that American “do-gooders” can have
just as malign an impact overseas as American soldiers, corporations,
and financiers. We are hegemons by birthright.

So, what’s an American to do?

First of all, we Americans must be much more modest about what we can
do in international affairs as individuals and as a country. We need
to jettison our super-hero complex, whether as liberating soldiers or
arm-twisting diplomats. We need to work alongside partners, not on top
of them.

But above all, we need to listen. In the anti-apartheid movement, we
listened to our South African partners. In the struggle for peace and
justice in the Middle East, we listen to our Palestinian and Israeli
partners. That’s the essence of solidarity.

So, first step: listen to our progressive brothers and sisters in
Ukraine and Russia. They should be the primary guides to our action,
not some set of abstract principles. Otherwise, even the harshest
critics of U.S. empire end up falling victim to the same assumptions
that lie at the core of America’s uber-arrogant foreign policy.

_John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus. His latest
book is Right Across the World: The Global Networking of the
Far-Right and the Left Response
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_Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) [[link removed]] is a
“Think Tank Without Walls” connecting the research and action of
scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the United States a
more responsible global partner. It is a project of the Institute for
Policy Studies._

_FPIF provides timely analysis of U.S. foreign policy and
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_While our editors work to ensure that FPIF contributions are
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_FPIF is edited by Peter Certo, the senior editorial manager of the
Institute for Policy Studies. It is directed by John Feffer, an IPS
associate fellow, playwright, and widely published expert on a broad
array of foreign policy subjects._

* U.S. foreign policy
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* Ukraine
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* Russia
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* Code Pink
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* Noam Chomsky
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