“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
—Henry Kissinger in William F. Buckley Jr. United Nations Journal: A Delegate’s Odyssey (1974), pp 56–57.
In the spring of 2008, a nation’s intricate history was brought to the forefront in a televised spectacle: ‘Great Ukrainians,’ a pageant of historical reverence, a populist echo of the ‘great man’ theory. Citizens entrusted with discerning their nation’s apotheosis cast their votes, unknowingly inviting discord. The unveiling of the result brought forth a spectral figure, third from the revered ranks: Stepan Bandera. A nationalist, a Nazi collaborator, a symbol both revered and reviled, he became the lightning rod for a nation’s complex memory. In the fervent embrace of Western Ukrainians, he was crowned a hero of independence; those in the East, steeped in the bitter sediment of history, recoiled in visceral opposition. What was meant to be a unifying television show became a mirror reflecting the deep, intractable fissures within the Ukrainian heart. However, the Ukrainian leadership had a different idea when writing the country’s 20th-century history.
Great Television, again!
Friday’s Oval Office spectacle, a “great television” charade, revealed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s echo-chamber reality. “Ukraine started the war,” Trump stated earlier. Trump, a context casualty, stumbles. Zelensky insisted Russia’s army crossed the border on Feb. 24, 2022. The lie?
But the war’s actual start? Not ’22, but ’14, a civil war ignited by Ukraine, fueled by US hands. The ‘Popular demonstrations’ that ousted Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russia leader, were a culmination of widespread public dissatisfaction with his government’s perceived corruption and its decision to abandon a trade deal with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia, says the BBC. Coup, then war on voters: 2014’s legacy, today’s devastation in Ukraine. That’s the truth the Western Media silences, a truth that needs to be brought to light.
The narrative of Russian aggression, which Zelensky tirelessly echoes, did not originate with him. It predates his presidency, stretching back to 2008—the year of Georgia, the first attempt to flip the post-Soviet order to the West’s liking. Every talking point and refrain was already circulating long before he took office. The Western political class and its media counterparts never contradicted it; on the contrary, they fed it to the Ukrainian public and the more credulous segments of Europe. The others—those who understood the game—played along. This narrative, however, is not just about Ukraine and Russia. It reflects deeper geopolitical ambitions and power struggles that shape the global order.
Scholars reject imposed Cold War frameworks, demanding nuanced analysis. This is called Westplaining as scholars stand defiant in Eastern European circles, a rebuke to Western narratives that ignore local complexities. Similarly, Oliver Stone’s Ukraine on Fire, depicts the decade’s turmoil, but the infamous exchange between the then US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, casts a long shadow over the unfolding drama. The “popular demonstrations” myth is a polished stone concealing a bloody truth.
It is like saying that the Israel-Palestine conflict began on Oct. 7, 2023, and even this revisionist narrative found legs on the backs of anti-semitism and the West’s blindsiding: Israel wrote the script, and the West recited it. The story walked into the public consciousness.
The Bluff
The world shifted in 1991, but America’s vision remained fixed. The Soviet Union’s collapse, rather than ushering in a balanced, multipolar era, fueled a belief in unchallenged US dominance. This unipolar dream, as if heeding Brzezinski’s Blueprint, where NATO and EU expansion as a synchronized advance pushing Russia to the periphery, drove policy. NATO’s eastward expansion became the physical manifestation of this ambition: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and in 2004, the Baltic states and others joined. Gone were the buffer zones, the delicate diplomatic balances of the Cold War. In their place, a relentless march, a doctrine of no limits. Neutrality, a forgotten concept, was replaced by a stark choice: align or be suspect. This wasn’t a policy of a single administration but a generational project, a bipartisan endeavour. The goal was clear: establishing American hegemony and defining the global order in America’s terms. The broken promises of 1990 echoed through the years. German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Hans Dietrich Genscher and US Secretary of State James Baker’s assurance to Gorbachev, “not one inch eastward,” was a cornerstone of German reunification. Yet, Bill Clinton’s 1994 decision, the first wave of NATO expansion, discarded that pledge.These documents are the silent witnesses to this betrayal. Far from being a new beginning, the post-Cold War world became a stage for reasserting old power dynamics, a testament to the enduring allure of unipolarity.
The Minsk agreements, I and II, were signed with a diplomat’s flourish, the ink still wet with the pretence of peace. These agreements, brokered by the ‘Normandy Four’ (Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France), were designed to halt the slow, brutal grinding of war in the Donbas, a document of quiet assurances and unfulfilled obligations. But is deception not the currency of power? The Minsk accords functioned in a realm where truth is a pliable substance moulded to fit the moment’s needs. The pragmatic and unsentimental West had never truly believed that Vladimir Putin would honour the accords in good faith. They had suspected what he suspected—that words on a page were not safeguards against artillery. This is the truth behind the Minsk agreements that need to be acknowledged.
And so, Minsk became a war document masquerading as a peace agreement. It held for a time, long enough for Ukraine to recalibrate its military strategy, long enough for the West to solidify its support, and long enough for a confrontation that had always loomed on the horizon to take its full and terrible shape. The tragedy, as always, was not in the high-level manoeuvring but in the life ground between its gears. The soldiers who bled for a conflict prolonged by diplomacy, the civilians caught between promises and artillery fire—these were the actual witnesses to the failure of Minsk, the human toll of a war that had never honestly paused.
Long regarded as the anchor of European pragmatism, Angela Merkel would later reflect with an air of quiet revelation. In a December 2022 interview with Die Zeit, she remarked that Minsk had, in effect, bought Ukraine time. It was not a confession but a post-facto justification, delivered with the seasoned detachment of a stateswoman unburdened by office. She implied that the accords were not an end but a strategic interlude—an opportunity for Ukraine to fortify itself, recalibrate, and prepare. Petro Poroshenko, then Ukraine’s president, was more candid. Years later, he would state that the agreements had never been about peace but stalling for time. It was a pause, an intermission in the broader play of strategy, in which diplomacy wore the mask of sincerity while the war machinery continued its slow, inevitable churn beneath. François Hollande, who had sat at the same negotiating tables, offered neither contradiction nor embellishment. The accords, he conceded, had allowed Kyiv to strengthen its military capacity. He did not suggest outright deception, nor did he deny it. The quiet logic was there, unspoken: the West had extended a hand while the other worked to reinforce the walls.
Viktor Yanukovych was elected president of Ukraine in 2010 on the platform of Ukraine’s neutrality. Before the 2014 coup, there were no territorial demands. Yet, the United States decided that Yanukovych must be overthrown because he favoured neutrality and opposed NATO enlargement. It was, in essence, a regime change operation.
The revelation that these accords were never genuinely meant as a bridge to reconciliation but as a gambit to strengthen Ukraine’s position reframes the narrative of Russian betrayal. Moscow, which had entered into the accords with its designs, now held up Merkel’s admission as proof of Western perfidy. In its telling, Russia had not been deceived but deliberately strung along while NATO edged ever closer to its doorstep.
NATO Expansion and Netanyahu’s wars
The American design, a dual-edged blade, sought to purge the ghosts of Soviet allegiance to excise the Ba’athist party armature and perceived malignancy of Hamas and Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, with a vision as stark as desert stone, envisioned a singular dominion: a unified Israel stretching from the Jordan’s flow to the Mediterranean’s embrace, encompassing all of pre-1948 Palestine. One state, and one state only, bearing the Star of David. This grand vision of dismantling the two-state dream was not an impulse. A staunch detractor of the now-faded Oslo Accords, he has, with practiced ease, revived his familiar political persona: the unwavering sentinel against the perceived failures of the peace process. This tactic, a well-worn strategy in the region’s political theater, casts him as the reliable antagonist, the one figure consistently opposed to the Oslo paradigm. While the accords themselves may have receded into the annals of history, his opposition remains a constant, a fixed point in the ever-shifting landscape of regional politics. The portrayal, whether genuine conviction or calculated maneuver, serves to reinforce his image as a steadfast opponent, a figure whose identity is inextricably linked to the rejection of a peace that never quite materialized.
Even the deaths in Oct 7 attacks were attributed to this factor. It traced its roots to a document, a blueprint known as “Clean Break,” conceived in 1996 by Netanyahu and his American confidants. This manifesto, a testament to unwavering ambition, sought to dismantle the notion of partition, leaving its spectral presence lingering in the digital archives, a testament to a long-held desire. In this calculus, Dissent was a fragile thing, quickly shattered by the might of a friendly hand—America’s. “Overthrow,” the unspoken command, a policy etched in the annals of US intervention until the dawn of this very day. Whether this doctrine would endure remained a question mark suspended in the air. A new twist emerged: perhaps Gaza, instead of becoming Israel’s domain, would fall under the aegis of American stewardship, a desire imparted by the highest office.
Gaza is all over this.
The Oval Office brawl remains seared in my mind, much like that iconic image of President Reagan meeting Afghan freedom fighters—the Mujahideen—in 1986. The through-line is unmistakable. The United States, ever the master of spectacle, has long understood that war—especially proxy war—is as much a performance as a policy. What matters is not merely who wins or loses but how the narrative is framed, how the roles are assigned, and, most crucially, who is chosen to bear the weight of blame when the illusion inevitably unravels.
In the post 9/11 trauma, the narrative of counterterrorism, the shared enemy, served as a convenient pretext, a veil to mask the underlying objectives. While the world focused on the immediate threat, the strategic planners were already looking ahead, laying the groundwork for a new era of American dominance. The proffered hand of cooperation, the fleeting moment of potential unity, was overshadowed by the enduring pursuit of strategic advantage. The ruins of the World Trade Center, a symbol of vulnerability, became a springboard for a renewed assertion of American power, a testament to the enduring allure of geopolitical ambition. By Sept. 20, a mere nine days after the attacks, a document, a blueprint for future action, was circulating. The US General Wesley Clark, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in 1997, later revealed the existence of this document. It was a chillingly precise agenda outlining a plan to overthrow the governments of seven nations within five years. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran—these names, like dominoes, were slated to fall. The Gaza genocide and other ongoing wars aligned neatly with these strategic prescriptions.
Washington’s playbook is: overthrown first, and negotiation is never. Covert ops topple, and then overt wars ignite. Every “enemy” is a new Hitler. That is how the US presents its foes as existential threats, invoking Munich 1938 to dehumanize them as Hitler. This is a bipartisan trait in the US, and the West broadly follows the diktat.
The Fate of a “Patsy”
Zelensky’s rise from television actor to wartime leader is, in many ways, a fitting encapsulation of how modern war is waged in the West—not merely as a struggle of arms but as a carefully choreographed narrative. Zelensky as a patsy—the comparison is as damning as it is apt. He is not the first leader thrust onto the stage as a symbol, as a proxy, only to be abandoned when the performance reaches its final act. The implication is unavoidable: he is a figurehead, a puppet of grander geopolitical forces, taking responsibility for decisions made in Washington, Brussels, and NATO headquarters. His fate is not merely to preside over disaster but to absorb its blame when the moment arrives.
And that moment is approaching. England and France now murmur about sending NATO “peacekeeping” troops, a move that, if realized, will invite the very war they claim to forestall. Russia has already demonstrated its red lines; the West’s insistence on testing them will grind yet more lives into dust.
It is a humiliating denouement, a testament to the precariousness of alliance with Washington. But let us not pretend he was left without inducements: a well-calibrated arrangement of promises and threats ensured that he would lead his people into the inferno, an offering to the gods of Western hegemony.
Other European states ought to take heed. Washington’s neoconservative and globalist factions hush assurances, promising that the nationalist turn in American politics is a temporary anomaly and that power will soon be restored to its rightful custodians. But Ukraine’s fate is a cautionary tale.
The war in Ukraine is no longer a battlefield struggle; it is a warning, a harbinger of what is to come should the world continue to mistake Washington’s ambitions for benevolent order. When the dust settles, and the script is rewritten yet again, the verdict will not be one of Western miscalculation but of Zelensky’s failure.
Boris Johnson’s Ukraine gambit was a lifeline for a drowning leader. Sir Keir Starmer’s war policy is a matter of economic calculus: Labour Party’s Economy Growth Plan. Emmanuel Macron’s Ukraine strategy is a last-ditch effort to prove that Europe is not merely an appendage to American power. And yet, none of them—neither the UK nor France nor the broader European elite—have genuinely influenced the outcome of this war. The battlefields of Ukraine are not shaped by Downing Street pronouncements or Élysée declarations but by decisions made in Washington and Moscow. The great European project—the dream of a self-determining, geopolitically sovereign continent—is slipping away, replaced by a future in which Europe is neither master of its fate nor arbiter of its security.
Narendra Pachkhédé is a critic and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva.
