What,
exactly, is the interest of the United States in Ukraine? According to the
U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership (hereinafter the “Strategic
Partnership”) signed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Ukrainian
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Washington, D.C. on November 10, 2021 [1], the interest is
quite extensive.
Apparently,
we are now “strategic partners” with Ukraine for the stated reason that there
are “core principles and beliefs shared by both sides….” And both countries “intend
to continue a range of substantive measures to prevent external direct and hybrid
aggression against Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for such aggression and
violations of international law, including the seizure and attempted annexation
of Crimea and the Russia-led armed conflict in parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk
regions of Ukraine, as well as its continuing malign behavior. The United
States intends to support Ukraine’s efforts to counter armed aggression,
economic and energy disruptions, and malicious cyber activity by Russia,
including by maintaining sanctions against or related to Russia and applying
other relevant measures until restoration of the territorial integrity of
Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.”
While the United States Constitution provides that the President has “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…,” [2] there doesn’t seem to be any constitutional provision for such agreements as the Strategic Partnership. It seems that the Framers of the Constitution never thought about the President entering into agreements with foreign powers without the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senators present to vote on them.
Now
the Constitution nowhere says that the President can’t enter into such
agreements. But the Constitution is supposed to be a document that tells the
federal government what it can do, not what it cannot do. The
Constitution specifically gives the President power to enter into treaties
subject to the stated stipulations. But it nowhere says that if the President
doesn’t want to bother with Senate ratification, he can simply make agreements
like the Strategic Partnership.
Nonetheless,
the Supreme Court has given executive agreements legal effect. [2] And while this
may have been a tolerable convenience in minor cases, the Strategic Partnership
saddles us with a commitment that may bring us an inch away from war with a
nuclear power.
True,
there is nothing that says that we are committed to enter the war should Russia
attack Ukraine. All we have promised to do is impose economic sanctions. And
President Biden has said that our response will not involve U.S. troops. But is
there anyone who doubts that, should the attack occur, voices will be raised
saying that we should not tolerate such an affront? Isn’t it obvious that the
party currently out of power will try to attribute such an incident to the
current President’s weakness?
3000 U.S. troops have been ordered into Eastern Europe. [3] Ostensibly, this is to support NATO members. Why? Is there any particular reason to believe that Russia will actually attack NATO countries because of its dispute with Ukraine?
We
don’t need to be psychic in order to be uneasy. The American government has
given us plenty of reason down through the years for us to be wary of its
trigger finger. And for more than a century it has given us no reason to think
it is telling us the truth as a regular practice.
President
James K. Polk declared “to the nation that Mexico had ‘spilled American blood
on the American soil.’ The problem is that it wasn’t, strictly speaking,
American soil. That territory had been under dispute between Mexico and Texas
during the time of Texas independence, and America inherited that dispute when
it acquired Texas through annexation in 1845.” [4] Now Polk wanted
to acquire what is now the southwestern United States, by war with Mexico if
need be.
So, he “sent an army into the disputed territory and planted it directly across
the Rio Grande from the dusty little Mexican town of Matamoros, where a large
number of Mexican troops were stationed. This was highly incendiary, and it
inevitably led to a skirmish in which 11 American soldiers were killed and
another 50 or so captured. Polk promptly sent a message to Congress saying the
United States and Mexico were in a state of war and calling for a congressional
war declaration.”
“The Spanish-American War began in 1898 when President William McKinley claimed that the warship USS Maine had been blown up by Spanish saboteurs. Subsequent investigations showed that the explosion originated inside the ship, probably due to an accidental fire in the munitions compartment.
“More
recently, the Vietnam War moved into high gear when President Lyndon B. Johnson
used an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify massive military intervention
in Southeast Asia. The incident occurred in disputed waters, and one supposed
gunboat attack never happened. The enemy might have been a pod of whales.”
[5]
As
for the Iraq War, “President George W. Bush, apparently persuaded by Vice
President Dick Cheney, argued that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear capacity, and that there were
clear connections between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the
9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Both claims were
concocted.
“But
the dark shadow of 9/11 hung ominously over all deliberations in that moment,
so the CIA bent the evidence to fit the fabrication, a cowed Congress went
along and the bulk of the American media endorsed the deception. Dissent became
unfashionable.
“When the facts became clear and the justification for our military intervention evaporated, a new rationale needed to be invented. We were, it turned out, committed to the creation of a democratic government in the middle of the Middle East.”
But
they’re telling us the truth this time, right? When are we going to stop being
Charlie Brown for the U.S. government’s Lucy? Are we really going to try to
kick the ball again?
The
truth is, there is plenty of pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine. [6] This situation is
far more complex than one strong nation thinking about invading a smaller one
in order to feed the ego of a foreign dictator. Most of us in the United States
don’t have a firm grasp on what’s going on there, and the outcome of this
crisis will have little, if any, impact on our lives. Unless we make it have an
impact.
This
is why George Washington, who said many prescient things in his Farewell
Address, told us to observe “good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate
peace and harmony with all….” [7] And with that
advice, he gave a warning:
“In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when
accidental
or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate,
envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill will and resentment,
sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of
policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity and
adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the
animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by
pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often,
sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.
“So
likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety
of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary
common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing
into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in
the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or
justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of
privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making
the concessions—by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been
retained—and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in
the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious,
corrupted, or deluded
citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or
sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with
popularity; gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation a
commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the
base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”
This
warning, though given to us in 1796, couldn’t be more timely.
Most
of us won’t profit from the military expenditures that will be made in
connection with the Ukraine crisis, expenditures that will be made regardless
of whether the United States becomes involved militarily. Isn’t time that we
stop crafting our foreign policy to satisfy the interests of the few who will?
Isn’t it time that the United States begin heeding the advice of its first
President that the “great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations
is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political
connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them
be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”
Is
the Strategic Partnership such an engagement that should be fulfilled with
perfect good faith? It isn’t a treaty that binds us, but we would suffer a loss
of credibility internationally if we abandoned it. Still, we shouldn’t forget
that the Strategic Partnership in no way obligates us to enter the conflict
with our own military, and that must not happen.
In the meantime, let this incident be a lesson to us that cavalier diplomacy is highly dangerous. From this point forward, let Senate ratified treaties be the sole means by which the United States commits itself internationally, and let this be known to the entire world.