Benjamin Abelow on the USA and Russia: I will tell you something that is 'not allowed' to be said in the West

About six months into Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a little book appeared by an unknown author which quickly attracted public attention and elicited praise from such luminaries as Noam Chomsky, John Mearsheimer, Chas Freeman and former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock, among others. The book’s author is Benjamin Abelow, and its title is How the West Brought War to Ukraine. While not in any way justifying Russia’s invasion, Abelow lays chief blame for the war at the feet of US and NATO leaders, who – he argues – by a series of aggressive moves over the course of three decades, ultimately placed Russia in an untenable position, dramatically increasing the likelihood that Russian leaders would see no better alternative than to invade. The book has so far been translated into seven languages.

Benjamin Abelow cut his teeth in the field of foreign policy in Washington DC during the Reagan years, while doing political lobbying for an NGO on nuclear arms issues. With the Cold War still on, and the new Pershing II and Cruise missiles being deployed to Europe, Abelow and his colleagues were heavily engaged in trying to slow down the intense nuclear arms race that was still underway between the US and USSR, lobbying for policy programmes such as the bilateral ‚Nuclear Freeze‘. In the course of his work he became deeply focused on the technical issues involved in these weapon systems – the payloads of their rockets, how they can actually be used, etc. – as well as on strategic issues such as ‚mutually assured destruction‘ vs ‚counterforce/first strike‘ capability, and so on. Although these issues faded into the background after the end of the Cold War, they left Abelow with a keen awareness of how easily tensions in the international order can become dangerously volatile. It was this awareness, he says, that in recent years enabled him to see very quickly, as tensions rose between Russia and the West, the implications of what the US was doing in terms of nuclear arms and how destabilizing and threatening this was to Moscow. It also gave him a clear sense of how easily the current war between Russia and Ukraine could escalate to the global level and become a real nuclear war between superpowers. It was this that motivated him to write the book. When I recently spoke with him I wanted to get his take on the current situation in Ukraine and the recent signs of potential escalation, but first I wanted to ask him about the most controversial aspect of the book: his argument that it’s the West, rather than Russia, that bears principal responsibility for the war and for the ongoing destruction of Ukraine.

I imagine that for most people in the West, the first surprising thing about your book will be its title: How the West Brought War to Ukraine. It will sound to some like you’re trying to exonerate President Putin or the Russians. What was actually your purpose in writing the book?

I really do believe that it was Western actions that ultimately led to this war. Of course Mr. Putin made the decision to go to war, and I actually believe he didn’t have to. At the very least I think he could have delayed the process. But I think Western actions put sufficient pressure on Russian leaders, and created such a threat to Russia militarily, that Russia therefore acted in a way that, if the situation had been reversed, US leaders would have done pretty much the same thing. And this is a central point in the book: that it’s very easy to say this is all Putin’s fault – but what would the US have done in the same situation? And I try to make that point very clearly. But to answer your question: It was not my goal to justify the war. It was my goal to explain the war. I personally can’t really justify these kind of actions that lead to the death of innocents, or even to the death of soldiers. But I do think it’s very important to explain and understand, because otherwise you’re left with a very distorted narrative, which is the one that’s become central in the West – namely, that Putin was looking to expand territorially, and that he’s essentially the new Hitler.

Okay, let’s talk about this military pressure a bit. You argue in the book that NATO expansion, especially Ukraine’s potential membership, and other aggressive moves by the US in particular were perceived by Russia – and you say justifiably so – as constituting an existential threat. And that this was the main factor in their decision to invade. But many people I speak with here in Slovakia don’t believe that. They point out that NATO is purely a defensive alliance that had no intention of ever invading Russia. And that therefore, Russian leaders were either paranoid, or they simply used NATO expansion as a pretext for invading. What do you say to those people?

Yes, that’s a very common argument. Let me make two points in response. First, regarding NATO’s intentions: I also don’t believe that NATO was actually looking to attack Russia. So in that sense I agree with one of the premises of the argument. I don’t see NATO as about to launch a first strike. In terms of my understanding of nuclear weapons and how these things work, the reality is that both the US and Russia are in some sense invulnerable to a first strike, because each knows that the other will always retain some element of a retaliatory force – which means that enough weapons will survive a first strike to totally devastate the attacking society. So ‚mutually assured destruction‘, or MAD, will remain in place. Having said that, however, it’s important to point out that regardless of NATO’s intentions, when it comes to a country’s security leaders do not normally act on the basis of stated intentions. No prudent military planner would risk a nation’s security on the stated intentions of a potential enemy. They react in response to technical capacities – they look at offensive capability and location of the hardware. And in fact, that’s the whole basis for arms control, which is always implemented on a verifiable basis, precisely because neither country trusts the stated intentions of the other. So we therefore try to control the actual technical threats that each country poses. And from the Russian point of view, this becomes even more important in the context of recent history, where they have reason to be concerned that the US’s stated intentions might not be accurate or honest – for example in terms of US assurances given to Gorbachev in 1991 that NATO would not expand eastward. Again, I don’t believe that the US or NATO was looking to attack Russia. But the question is, how do their actions appear to Russian eyes?

Okay, so it’s normal for a country not simply to accept the stated intentions of a potential adversary. But what actions did the West actually take that were threatening to Russia?

That’s my second point. The reality is that the weapons the US was looking to deploy, the moves the US had already taken with respect to their anti-ballistic missile systems, and importantly, their abrogation of key arms control treaties in Europe – these were things that created actual threats to Russia, in terms of the US’s ability, for example, to attack command and control structures with very little warning. This was pointed out by many experts, for instance by members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a powerful US think tank, which is by no means a ‚dovish‘ organisation. Let me give a concrete example that I cite in the book, which I think can help drive home the point. In 2020 and also in 2021, on two separate occasions, NATO carried out live-fire rocket exercises or missile launches in Estonia, using weapons that had a range that could reach well into Russia. And the stated aim was to practice destroying air defence targets inside Russia – air defence systems tasked with protecting command and control centres, among other things. Now, these missiles did not actually enter Russian territory, but they nonetheless were fired from Estonia, right on Russia’s border. So why was NATO doing this? NATO was doing this because it was working with this question: What would we do if Russia invaded Eastern Europe, or Estonia in particular? And they thought: well, part of our strategy has to be to take out air defence targets inside Russia. Now from a Western perspective, those actions were taken as part of a defensive strategy: once the war gets going, we have to be able to take out things which on the surface look defensive – like air defence systems – because ultimately they can be used as a component in offensive threats. But from a Russian perspective, what they see is foreign powers – especially countries from outside the area, like the US – using weapons that can reach Russian territory, and they’re actually firing off those weapons. So again, coming back to the question we talked about earlier: what would the US do if Russia had allied with Canada and practiced destroying air defence targets inside the United States from Canadian territory? Now the Russians in that scenario might state that their actions are defensive, and they might actually be defensive – in the same sense that the US exercises in Estonia were defensive. But there’s no way a country on the receiving end will see them as defensive. They will interpret them as a possible plan of a first strike. And this is a good example of what’s referred to in International Relations studies as a ‚security dilemma‘: namely, the actions that one country may take for defensive reasons can be perceived by the other as offensive, based on the capacity for offensive use. To repeat what I said earlier: countries don’t act on the basis of the stated intentions of potential adversaries, they act on the basis of actual military capacities.

Okay, so if the USA has no intention of actually attacking Russia from these positions along their border, what is the point of moving NATO forces or potentially nuclear weapons closer to Russia? Is there some kind of strategic advantage to having these weapon systems in place near the Russian border, some kind of leverage that can be brought to bear?

You know, so much of this has to do with reality versus perception. The reality is that almost no matter what either country did, what kind of attack it carried out, the military force of the other country would remain intact enough, and strong enough, that it would devastate the attacking country. And both countries know that. So this serves as a deterrent and a stabilising factor, just as it did during the Cold War. But the fact is that the leadership of these countries – inaccurately, but they still think this way – do actually fear a first strike. They worry that the other side might think it can carry one out – and that this makes them vulnerable. This is the perception. Both countries are very sensitive to the possibility that a first strike could really disable them – however remote that possibility may actually be. And this becomes most important with respect to command and control systems, because even if you have hardened weapons protected deep underground, or submarines that ostensibly can’t be reached, if you can devastate the command and control structures you may be able to wipe out the control of those weapons. And I think the threat of that kind of command and control or so-called ‚decapitation‘ attack is strong enough that both countries have a fear of it, even if they feel statistically that it’s unlikely to succeed. This became very clear with the anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) that the US started deploying in Poland and Romania, which were capable of intercepting Russian missiles. Because the main deterrent against a US first strike is a Russian retaliatory strike, and for a retaliatory strike to be effective one has to make sure that it’s not taken down by an ABM system. So I think the weapons superiority the US already had at the time, combined with the US abrogating the ABM Treaty and then putting ABM missiles in Poland and Romania, was itself perceived as a threat by Moscow. And this threat was high enough that I think they might have felt they could be coerced into other types of positions they might not want to take on an international level.

Because it would be like the West was holding a gun to their head?

Right. And I think also, certain actions the US had already taken in places like Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, where it was very clear the US was trying to carry out regime change – with even NATO involved in some actions outside its own area, for example in Libya – I think this also increased Russia’s sense that what the West is actually engaged in here is a regime change operation. Regime change within Russia itself, trying to get rid of Putin. Because Putin was hated by the West, particularly by the US, almost from the first moment he came in, for various reasons: partly because he changed Russia from how it was in the 1990s when it was very weak and basically doing whatever the US wanted. So I think from Russia’s viewpoint, the combination of several things – the perceived great hatred of Putin, the US attempt to establish ABM systems in Europe, the fact that these systems could allow for the placement of offensive nuclear weapons near Russia with a quick strike capability with limited warning time – I think all of these things came together in a kind of very threatening cocktail. And again, if anything approximating this had been carried out by Russia in countries surrounding the US, there is no doubt the US would have gone to war. No question.

You just mentioned the potential offensive use of the ABM systems in Romania and Poland. These are technically defensive weapons, but you point out in your book that they can easily be converted from defensive to offensive systems. Can you say something about that?

Yes, these particular ABM systems actually pose two threats. The first we already talked about: the ability to defend against a retaliatory nuclear strike by Russia, which makes a first strike by the US or NATO more plausible. But in addition to this, the launchers used in these systems can easily be converted to offensive missile launchers. This is a particular type of launcher called an MK 41, sometimes referred to as the ‚Aegis Assure‘ system. It was initially a US Navy system, and can accommodate almost any kind of missile, including offensive weapons such as the Tomahawk Cruise missile, which is nuclear capable. So probably within about 24 hours the defensive missiles within the MK 41 launchers could be removed and replaced, for example, by nuclear offensive Cruise missiles. And this in as little as a few hundred miles from Moscow. Then the software program within the launcher itself could be changed over. Actually the information of how the software is changed is classified, but it’s probably as simple as somebody coming in with a suitcase. So yes, these launchers intrinsically carry a double threat – they can facilitate a first strike, and also within a short time be turned into a direct offensive threat.

You’ve talked about how neither side wants to attack the other because of the possibility of nuclear annihilation. But could that change? Is it conceivable that at some point in the future the political situation in the world could become so unstable, so risky, that one side or the other might actually consider launching a first strike? Is it possible that the Russians, when they were perceiving this threat from NATO, were looking down the road into one possible future?

As we already discussed, even though both countries are afraid to launch a first strike themselves, both sides also fear that the other side might actually decide to carry out a first strike. And under certain circumstances, for example the kind of scenario you just mentioned – maybe a conventional war goes badly, or a certain new leader comes into power who is perceived as more threatening – under those circumstances, a country might become even more concerned that the opponent may actually attempt a first strike. And some of those changes can happen very quickly – which is again a reason why it’s so important to control the technology. And not only that, but it’s also extremely important to maintain good relations in order to avoid this kind of scenario. I think Chas Freeman makes a very good point on this. He talks about the US policy of applying ‚maximum pressure‘ on Russia, and how this itself has been so highly destabilising. So I do think that your point here is valid, that under certain circumstances situations can evolve where a first strike actually becomes more and more likely. And in fact, what’s so destabilizing in such a scenario, is that if one country really becomes afraid that another country is considering launching a first strike, it may say: well, this is crazy but we’re going to beat them to the punch and strike first. Because at least this way the other side will have fewer surviving weapons to strike back. Okay, we may lose New York and Chicago and our land-based weapons, but at least it won’t totally destroy our country. And so either side, if they fear a first strike by the other, may be willing to take actions that precipitate a nuclear war, on the belief that at least they can partially mitigate the damage they will incur.

So then how do you see the situation we’re actually in now, this proxy war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine? Many people have been warning about the danger of escalation here. Could this lead to a situation where one side or the other feels desperate enough to consider using nuclear weapons?

One of the things that’s so crazy – and I’m thinking here particularly of Avril Haines, who’s the head of US National Security and testified this way in front of Congress – she said that one of the circumstances under which Russia might contemplate using nuclear weapons, is if they perceive a threat to their vital interests. So let’s say NATO did join the war directly, and let’s say NATO did start to succeed – which is exactly why NATO would join the war, because they would want to win. Now if Moscow perceived an existential threat – a winning NATO force on their border that potentially could invade and attack Moscow or take territory – it’s possible at that point that Russia might be willing to use tactical nuclear weapons. This is an example of how a conventional conflict could go nuclear. There could also be situations where something happens by accident, and in fact there have already been a number of incidents in this war, close calls between enemy aircraft. All it would take is for two aircraft to collide, to tremendously up the pressure. Or for NATO soldiers to be killed. We’ve seen it in the Middle East, where now that some US soldiers have been killed in an attack, Biden has said we are much more likely to go to war. So if US troops were killed in Ukraine this could create tremendous political pressure within the US to escalate. And that escalation could get out of control – both sides could lose control of the situation.

In the book you bring up the famous episode of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a very tense situation that arose between the US and the Soviet Union when the Soviets deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba. The situation was resolved peacefully, although historians believe that at that point we came very close to actual nuclear war. How does that episode relate to what’s happening today?

In the Cuban situation, Kennedy and Khrushchev really had already established a kind of a pre-existing relationship of significant trust. I don’t want to say they trusted each other one hundred percent, but they each really recognized a certain humanity in the other, and they also recognized that both leaders were subject to intense pressure from within their own governments to escalate. They acknowledged and understood those pressures, and were trying to make allowances for them, which also involved a recognition that things could get out of control, even if the two leaders themselves didn’t want them to. So I see that episode as very important in this context, because right now what we see in the West – certainly within the US, and among Western European leaders as well – is in sharp contrast to this. On the one hand, we see an almost complete unwillingness to communicate. Anything that involves any attempt to have a human relationship with the opponent’s leadership is seen as playing into Putinesque propaganda, as carrying out Russian objectives. So we have a situation of overt hostility. And not only hostility, but involving a pattern that makes it culturally unacceptable even to communicate in a way that could potentially lead to de-escalation. I mean, Biden has made statements like: ‚This man cannot remain in power.‘ That’s almost verbatim saying: ‚We believe in regime change for this man.‘ And Anthony Blinken, who is the US’s number one diplomat, is almost more of a warmonger than the Defense Department. Actually Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, the top military man, was calling for a negotiated settlement last year, and Blinken was one of the people who was shutting that down. I’m sure there are certain ‚backdoor‘ communications that are going on, but they are really behind the scenes and probably taking place at a lower level. So I think we’re in a situation now where if things did escalate, it would be harder to stop than it was during the Kennedy period. And there we came very close to nuclear war.

So you’ve described the hostility on the US side – what about on the Russian side? Do you sense the same level of hostility among their leaders?

Well, I’m going to say two things. First, you can find any kind of opinion anywhere, but the one person who’s most visible within the Russian hierarchy who has made hostile statements toward the West is Dmitry Medvedev, who was the Russian President some years ago but is now the Deputy Secretary of the Defence Council. So you do have elements of that. But having said that, I now want to make a statement which one is ‚not allowed‘ to make here in the West. I would say that, by and large, the most important and senior and consequential members of the Russian government are actually acting in a way, in terms of their rhetoric and willingness to communicate, that is much more responsible than the way Western leaders are acting. Generally speaking, until recently, Putin and Lavrov have always referred to the Western leaders as ‚our partners‘, and only recently have they started to refer to them as ‚our opponents‘. And they sometimes mix the two together, so that you have the anti-West rhetoric but with a certain kind of restraint in it. And this is in very obvious contrast to what’s happening at some of the highest levels within the US government.

There have been some signs of escalation recently coming from the West – talks of NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine, possibly missile strikes deep into Russia. What do you make of these signs?

Yes, there have been Western leaders advocating the use of NATO weapons to strike deep within Russia, something the US has so far officially discouraged. Jan Stoltenberg, for instance, the head of NATO, has encouraged Ukraine to use weapons to strike within Russia, basically saying there should be no limits on how these weapons are used. And some of these weapons have quite a long range. And we can see now that certain European powers have actually been involved in planning such attacks. The British were very much involved in the attack on the Kerch Bridge. German generals have been speaking about their Taurus missiles being used to attack not only the Kerch Bridge but also arms depots within Russia, including at airbases where nuclear weapons are stored. The idea that Western powers would be encouraging or facilitating the use of their weapons to strike within Russian territory is very, very risky for the West. And when Emmanuel Macron recently started speaking about French troops in Ukraine, and stated explicitly we should have no red lines with respect to Russia, Putin responded by saying that if France has no red lines with respect to Russia, Russia will have no red lines with respect to France. You can imagine what this means. France is involved in attacking Russian territory, Russia responds with a limited strike on French forces within Ukraine. France responds: ‚You’ve just killed a thousand of our men. We are not going to take this sitting down, we are going to escalate.‘ Then Russia responds. Neither will back down and this can escalate right through the nuclear threshold into nuclear war. So I think right now we’re in a very dangerous situation. At the very least I think we should say the risk is high enough, that we have even more reason to seek a negotiated settlement as quickly as possible.