Positioned on the far left on the political spectrum, there are few areas where I find common ground with President Trump. Trump, however, is correct on Ukraine: It’s a war which never should have happened. I generally try to avoid partisan politics on this Page; this, however, is an effort to have less partisanship, to explore an area of agreement. Ukraine is an area where the far right and the far left largely agree.
The Trump Administration’s argument that the Western powers provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a new or half baked idea. This narrative, that NATO expansion to the Russian borders would have provacative consequences, has been a common narrative for the past three decades among Academics, many ranking U.S. military personnel, and numerous political figures which includes the highly regarded William Burns: U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2005-2008; Biden’s CIA chief from 2021-2025; who served in the State Department during the 1990s when the Clinton Administration made the disastrous decision to begin NATO’s expansion towards the Russian borders.
After the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit, during which the NATO nations declared that the Russian bordering states of Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members of NATO, Burns wrote to President Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
Socialist and others on the far left have consistently made the same arguments. These arguments find their roots three decades ago during NATO’s first round of eastward expansion during the late 1990s, through the addition of seven more nations to NATO during the Bush years, three of which–the Baltic states–border Russian territory, and then subsequent to the Bush administration, four additional states–each addition perceived by Russian elites and nationalist movements as a threat Russian security interests. All of this consequent to the 1990 quiet assurances granted by the West to Russia that NATO would not expand one inch eastward of the newly united German state.
When you also consider that the mere purpose of NATO’s 1949 formation was to counter the Soviet threat, one might begin to understand Russia’s concern over NATOs expansion to its borders. NATO’s expansion occurred while the West quietly declined Moscow’s akward suggestion that it too become a NATO member.
Additionally, in 2002, the U.S. withdrew from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) established with the former Soviet Union in 1972. After the 1991 Soviet break-up, Russia and three other former Soviet states continued to adhere to the Treaty’s terms. The 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty further justified Russian fears of the western threat.
Anyone who had followed all of this during the past three decades understood the trajectory towards war. This is an area where the far left and far right find common ground and it would be nice if the two sides could unite on this issue to prevent furthur war in Ukraine. Perhaps from here the two sides could unite in other areas of concern such as the economic hardship of the bottom 30 to 40% of the U.S. population: Both sides recognize the problem, although, currently, their solutions would look much different.
None of the above is intended to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All war should be condemned. It merely confirms there is equal guilt on both sides of the conflict. The West, in an effort to expand its economic, ideological, and security positions, likewise threatened Russia’s position in these same areas. War was the inevitable result.
There is some common ground between the far left and the far right: civil dialouge between the two sides might facilitate solutions.