OPINION:
The war in Ukraine is an American war for which our government should be shamed and blamed.
It was initiated by President Biden and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that if he rejected a peace treaty that his own government had freely negotiated and agreed to in 2022 with Russian negotiators, Ukraine could join NATO.
The treaty was more than 100 pages long, with each page initialed by both sides. Its essence was accepted by the Kremlin and Kyiv until Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson advised against it.
Their advice was to trust their military support, which would be strong enough to resist any Russian incursion into eastern Ukraine and relieve Kyiv of the need to make concessions to the Kremlin. They used Mr. Zelenskyy as a puppet since their purpose was not motivated by peace, empathy or justice but rather by hatred of all things Russian.
The U.S. and the U.K. encouraged bloodshed instead of peace and confrontation instead of communication, and Congress began paying for a war without declaring one. Motivated by years of anti-Russian jingoism, headless of its duties under the Constitution, thumbing its nose at least three treaties ratified by the Senate that permit war only when the U.S. or an ally is gravely threatened, Congress permitted Mr. Biden to start an undeclared war against a country that poses no threat to the security of the United States.
Here is the backstory.
The war began in 2014 when the State Department and the CIA engineered a coup against the popularly elected and neutral-leaning Ukrainian government. Much of Russian-speaking and Russian-culturally oriented Ukraine in the east was unhappy with the coup. The American and British plotters then installed a puppet regime that began attacking Russian Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine.
The area of eastern Ukraine in which this government-orchestrated violence was taking place has been Russian in culture, religion and language since before the American Revolution. The American and British plotters of the 2014 coup did not expect the resistance that it generated. Yet they looked the other way when Ukraine’s government attacked its own people for demonstrating a decided affinity for Moscow over Kyiv, one so prevalent that the province of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia.
One person who did not look the other way was Russian President Vladimir Putin. Who could blame him? The U.S. has known since the early 1990s that Russia will not accept an eastward expansion of NATO. The George H.W. Bush administration promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as much in return for the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe and especially the reunification of Germany. Nevertheless, with Poland’s entry into NATO, the Western perfidy became apparent as NATO — and its weapons — moved toward Moscow.
Angry that his predecessor had permitted this and fearful of the mentality that engineered the 2014 coup now managing NATO, Mr. Putin came to the rescue of Russian Ukrainians. When the U.S. and U.K. succeeded in busting the Russia-Ukraine treaty tentatively agreed to in Istanbul and tempted Mr. Zelenskyy with Ukrainian membership in NATO, Mr. Putin’s only option was to resist NATO expansion and the Ukrainian military with force.
Who can blame Mr. Putin? How would American presidents react to the threat of Chinese offensive weapons in Mexico?
I know this is not a popular history in the U.S., as mainstream media, popular culture and government schools have demonized Russia since the end of the Cold War. That demonization gave Mr. Biden cover to promise Mr. Zelenskyy “whatever he needs for as long as it takes.” In his nearly four years in the White House, Mr. Biden has declined to articulate what it takes to do what.
Mr. Biden’s war has cost American taxpayers nearly $240 billion and Ukraine 600,000 dead troops. Congress did not declare it. Many Americans facilitated it in Ukraine — in military uniform and out, intelligence personnel and defense contractors. Much of the military equipment that the U.S. has sent to Ukraine — most from America’s substance, not surplus — requires U.S. troops and other personnel to train Ukrainian troops in using it.
But last weekend, Mr. Biden — whose presidency has been thoroughly repudiated by American voters — authorized the use of offensive weapons that can reach 190 miles into Russia and which can be manned only by U.S. personnel. At this writing, the U.S. equipment has attacked and destroyed a warehouse holding artillery ammunition some 70 miles inside Russia.
Who is firing American offensive weapons?
There is no dispute but that the U.S. is waging war on Russia — without a congressional declaration, without the consent of the United Nations (as the U.S. is obliged to do under a treaty that the U.S. wrote) and solely on its own. I say solely on its own because the weapons that destroyed the Russian military warehouse require secret U.S. satellite technology to operate and U.S. personnel with top-secret security clearances to aim and trigger. It would be an act of espionage to permit Ukrainians to do this.
War is politics by other means. But it is the most deadly, destructive and irreversible means — and must always be a last resort. The Constitution intentionally separated the war-declaring power from the war-waging power. Its author, James Madison, poignantly argued that if presidents could both choose the enemy and fight it, such a person would be a prince and not a president.
Mr. Biden’s presidency has been an abysmal failure. He must perversely hope that history will reward him if he keeps the killing coming to the last Ukrainian and even risks a wider war. Can a presidency of peace come soon enough?
• To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
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