Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday he believes Russia acted in “good faith” amid the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, adding the U.S., in fact, bore heavy responsibility for the ongoing war.
To begin with, there is no question that the eastward expansion of NATO has been a severe neuralgic point for Moscow. But Putin’s concern has never been about actual military aggression from the defensively-oriented Western alliance. His real anxieties lie elsewhere: in the threat to the internal stability of his autocratic regime posed by the demonstration effect of successful liberal democracies on Russia’s doorstep. It is fear of democratic contagion that explains why, in one country after the next, using propaganda, intelligence operations, and direct violence, Putin has done his best to subvert democracy across Europe and the globe. On the territory of the former Soviet Union, Russia has waged war against Georgia, maintained troops in Moldova, pressured Kazakhstan, showed increasing determination to absorb Belarus, and sought to undermine the Baltic states. A Russia that seeks to be the prison house of nations is an enemy of freedom and a menace to the peace of the world.
As for NATO:
One obvious question Layne and Schwarz never pause to ask is why so many East European countries have been so eager to join the NATO Alliance. Could it be because all of them have had historical experience with Russian domination, lost their capacity to self-govern, been robbed of their basic freedoms, and suffered grievously from totalitarian oppression? Membership in the NATO alliance guards against a repetition of the terrible past. Even Finland and Sweden, two countries that have not exactly embraced American foreign policy in recent decades, now have rushed to join the safety afforded by the alliance.
Of course, Ukraine has been the repeated victim of Russian aggression, including in the post-Soviet era. The annexation of Crimea in 2014, the simultaneous assault on the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, the attempted subversion and/or domination of successive governments in Kyiv, were all stamped firmly in the Ukrainian consciousness even before February 24, 2022. Like every other sovereign country, Ukraine has a right to its territorial integrity, to defend itself, to chart a course of its own choosing.
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