In last week’s issue of the Leader, regular writer Douglas Milholland wrote in to cast blame on the United States for its “major” role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

While reasonable minds can disagree about what constitutes a “major” role, his list of contributions by the U.S., while containing some valid points, is also guilty in other places of a paucity of context, half truths, and even outright falsities.

For example, while many scholars of international relations would readily concede that the U.S. under the Clinton and Bush administrations was guilty of overaggressive expansion into Eastern Europe, there is simply no strong evidence that any explicit promise was made not to do so, as he blithely claims. Mikhail Gorbachev is on record as saying that did not happen.

In another line, he calls U.S. missile defense systems in Poland and Romania (placed at the request of the Polish and Romanian governments!) “offensive missiles.” While the line between defensive and offensive military assets is often much fuzzier than is commonly realized, systems whose design is configured solely for intercepting missiles are about as defensive as it gets.

Finally, Milholland blames the U.S. for upgrading its nuclear arsenal and withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. While I personally regard both of those as extremely flawed policy decisions made during the hapless Trump administration, he did leave out that Russia is guilty of repeated violations of the IRNFT, and has been spending countless billions modernizing its own nuclear weapons since the early 2000s - well before the U.S. began its effort - which was a response to Russia’s upgrades.

In short, his letter is guilty of putting far too much of the onus of this unprovoked and inhumane invasion on the U.S., when Russia is clearly the primary culprit.

Trent Diamanti
PORT TOWNSEND