Dear CCI Followers,
I’m delighted to send you the article below written by Anatol Lieven, the Quincy Institute’s new expert on Russia. We knew they were searching for a specialist to fill this position and were apprehensive about who would be selected.
We are elated it is Anatol Lieven! He is a great analyst and a truth teller unlike many others in the field.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Again, Washington jumps to conclusions over Ukraine-Russia skirmish
April 2, 2021
By Anatol Lieven
The initial reaction of Biden administration officials to the latest clash between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian militia (or Russian soldiers serving as militia) in eastern Ukraine exemplifies a very dangerous pattern in U.S. and Western behavior: to believe whatever “our” side in a given crisis tells us, automatically, and without checking facts.
How often in the past has the United States been seduced into disastrous international actions by local actors who knew the right American buttons to push and the right misinformation to feed to Washington? Iranian monarchists, British intelligence, the United Fruit Company, Vietnamese politicians; Cuban, Iraqi and Libyan exiles, Arab princelings, Afghan warlords, an almost endless succession of Latin American generals and oligarchs — I could go on.
While four Ukrainian soldiers died in the recent fighting, we have no independent evidence at all of who started it, or why, and more careful media outlets like the Financial Times have avoided apportioning blame in their reporting.