Col. Daniel Davis spoke with Massachusetts Peace Action about the hypocrisy of the United States concerning NATO expansion.

Here’s my summary.

Davis starts out by saying that people in the West believe a lot of disinformation, and there is a lot of wishful thinking.  He criticizes the notion that one side is totally evil in the conflict. He quotes a British commodore who says the West lives in a fantasy, whereas Vladimir Putin lives in reality.

Davis says that you have to go back to 2008 to know when the conflict started. That’s when the U.S. promised Ukraine eventual entry into NATO at the Bucharest Summit.   That angered Russia. When Georgia took steps to join NATO in 2009, Russia responded militarily, though Davis says that Georgian troops fired the first shots.

Davis asks if the U.S. would allow Russia or China to station missiles and troops in Mexico and along the border with Texas? The U.S. almost went to war in 1962 to stop Russian missiles in Cuba. Then why should the U.S. expect Russia to accept the U.S. expanding NATO into Ukraine, as it tried to do?  There’s no way the U.S. would say “Oh, Russia’s alliance with Mexico is just defensive.  We don’t mind.  They won’t attack us. They said so.”   The U.S.l would never trust Russia in that reverse scenario.

If you look at a map of NATO expansion, you’ll see that NATO was trying to surround Russia in the Black Sea. Already, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania are in NATO. Moldova collaborates with NATO. That leaves just Ukraine and Georgia. The U.S. tried to foment regime change in both Ukraine and Georgia, and it succeeded in 2014 in Ukraine.

Russia recalls with fear the history of Western armies invading through Ukraine: Napoleon in the 19th century and Hitler in the 20th century.  The plains in Ukraine are wide open and point straight at Moscow.

The Western narrative says that NATO is defensive. And Davis thinks people who say that probably believe it. But look at things from Russia’s point of view.

Davis described the division between pro-Western oblasts in the west, and pro-Russian oblasts in the east.

In 2013, when the Ukrainian government chose to come to a trade deal with Russia, Western provinces revolted.  There were protests and violence. Davis mentions allegations that the violence was a false flag operation (instigated by far-right elements), with sniper shots fired to make it look like the Ukrainian government did it.  [I think that may have happened in 2014, during the Maidan coup.]

In Feb 2014 there were negotiations between various sides and EU reps. They planned new elections in May. But western leaders in Ukraine threatened to impeach Yanukovich.  Victoria Nuland was on the street with the anti-Yanukovich protesters.  Yanukovicah was forced to flee to Russia.  Yanukovich had been legally elected.  The new government used the army to suppress protests and opposition in the east. There was large scale bloodshed, Odessa and the Donbas. So Russia started helping the separatists and occupied Crimea.   There were “little green men” who were Ukrainians (not Russian soldiers) who fought for independence.

Next Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine negotiated the Minsky agreements, to try to grant limited autonomy for the pro-Russian oblasts.  Davis says that there was a plebiscite in which voters overwhelmingly voted to align with Russia.   Angela Merkel, Hollande from France and Zelensky himself later acknowledged that the Minsk agreements were intended to allow Ukraine to build up arms to retake Crimea and the Donbas.  Til the invasion, Russia asked for Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements.

Davis says he was told by a senior diplomat who was a very close ally of the U.S. that when there was a meeting between Putin and Biden in June of 2021 that Putin told Biden that if the U.S. didn’t agree that Ukraine would never join NATO, Putin would use force to settle it.  Reportedly, Biden just said, “No, we’re gonna do whatever we want to do” and the U.S. will crush them with sanctions. NATO leaders said “Nobody is gonna tell us what to do with NATO.”    Putin made clear that to avoid war, the West just needed to agree that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO.

Davis says that it’s “patently false” to say, as many western leader say, that Russia was never serious about negotiations.  Even after the Feb 22 invasion, Russia continued to want negotiations.

Davis says that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met and Istanbul and were “this close” (fingers close together)  to coming to an agreement, but then Boris Johnson, Zelensky, and the U.S. nixed the deal. From there on, the weaponry provided to Ukraine escalated.

Davis says there’s never a chance for Ukraine to win, because Russia had the advantage in manpower, industrial capacity, and political will.  For Russia, Ukraine is an existential issue. Despite 50 nations giving training, money, missiles, ammunition, jets, tanks, targeting support, etc., there’s still now way Ukraine could win without NATO troops.  Davis said he wrote about this in 2021, 2022, and 2023. But people in Kyiv and the West ignore the realities, and Ukraine repeatedly rejected chances to take the off-ramp.  Now perhaps more than a million dead Ukrainians, and 1/5th of Ukraine is irrevocably lost.  Yet there are still people in the West who think the war is still winnable. But the longer the West waits, the worse deal Ukraine will get.

In the question-and-answer session,  I asked Davis whether lots of diplomats and foreign policy people secretly agree with Davis about Ukraine but are afraid to say so.  Davis said: not as many as you might think and as he wishes. “There are a lot more who just think it’s not winnable.” Not many go as far as John Mearsheimer who flat out said that the war was primarily our cause. They tend to think NATO is a defensive alliance.  Davis says the best response to such people is to present the scenario of Russia or China arming Mexico and having bases and troops on the U.S. border.