Let me be clear: I like Bernie Sanders in general. I voted for him over Hillary Clinton, and if I could have ranked my ballot, I would have put him as my second choice in 2020 after Elizabeth Warren. I agree with the results of his decision to support Ukraine and push for a two-state solution in Israel regardless of whether Bibi supports it or not, and he never has and never will.
But I fundamentally disagree with how Bernie Sanders got to his conclusion to support Ukraine. This is mostly in response to claims he made in this article by The Nation. I recommend reading it.
Bernie Sanders says the following:
I know it is not very popular in Washington to consider the perspectives of our adversaries, but I think it is important in formulating good policy.
One of the precipitating factors of this crisis, at least from Russia’s perspective, is the prospect of an enhanced security relationship between Ukraine and the United States and Western Europe, including what Russia sees as the threat of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), a military alliance originally created in 1949 to confront the Soviet Union.
He references former defense secretary William Perry, who was the Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton.
In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame. Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia.
I disagree with his choice of words here, and William Perry is simply wrong about the reasons why countries wanted to join NATO as soon as they could in the 1990s and 2000s. Both officials forget what happened between 1945 and 1949.
I have already written out the history of why NATO exists in my article But Why NATO?, which outlines how the Soviet Union, through fraudulent elections, coups, and invasions, conquered Eastern Europe.
One cannot understand the reason why NATO exists without fully recognizing the reason why NATO was started in the first place.
This is where Bernie Sanders and the rest of the American political elite get history wrong. Ukraine is no more part of Russia than East Germany. Russia has no right to Ukraine. Russia has no right to Chechnya. Russia has no right to Georgia.
Joining NATO is a choice made by sovereign states. Joining the Warsaw Pact was done by gunpoint.
The two could not possibly be more different.
Bernie needs to get his telling of history right.