By Jonathan Michael Feldman, March 9, 2025

A Case Study in Left Militarism

As should be obvious, Russian transgressions in Ukraine have violated international law, basic conceptions of human rights and democracy. The military mobilization in Europe which has accompanied the response has come at a great cost to other security needs. The Trump Administration has threatened an equitable settlement in this conflict, by making unilateral concessions to the Russian side. Nevertheless, we must examine whether or not NATO expansion and the deep militarization of Europe was necessary and whether behavior by Ukrainian elites complicated if not complicates the ability to advance a peaceful solution.

Michael Karadjis belongs to the camp that argues that any Russian motivations for attacking Ukraine did not exist, because the Russian attack constituted a form of “imperialism.” Motivations are not always based on morally-grounded reasons, according to realists who I subscribe to. Karadjis has apparently written a whole series of blog posts on the topic of Russian transgressions or posts that debunk Russian motivations. One entitled, “Ukraine Myth Series – Myth 2: The new government in 2014 banned the Russian language,” which can be found here, follows a consistent pattern. The pattern involves: (a) leveraging a valid critique of campist, neo-Stalinists, apologists for Putin to (b) seriously beg the question about how Ukrainian nationalist, pro-Western forces aligned with NATO expansion helped increase the probability the Ukraine would be attacked both in 2014 and 2022. I refer to the Karadjis discourse as “left militarism” because his contributions weaken the case against: (a) the managerial expansion of the US-centered warfare state and its European counterparts, (b) NATO expansion, (c) the security of various countries, particularly those in Scandinavia whose security posture eroded after NATO expansion, despite numerous claims to the contrary. Karadjis’s arguments, used to “defend” Ukraine, end up suggesting that a Russian intervention was not made more likely by either NATO or Ukrainian actions, with the current regime running Ukraine a particular focus. Note: I do not defend the Russian intervention or the Russian regime’s distortions of truth. Rather, I try to identify what motivates the Russian elites and how they are empowered by NATO and left militarists alike, as well as what is empowering others who sustain wars without any authentic diplomatic alternative. The weakly designed diplomacy of the Trump Administration simply fills a vacuum which some on the left to liberal spectrum have contributed to.

The alternative to Left militarism rests on the following principles:

1. Create a good faith diplomatic framework in which Ukrainian territorial concessions are not offered, but start with basic principles: Ukraine will remain neutral and disengaged from NATO, but have a territorial defense and supply within a certain territorial zone, with a buffer occupied by third party states trusted by both sides.
2. Do not make moral arguments about Ukrainian sovereignty, without balancing these with an analysis of the opportunity costs of NATO expansion, military budget diversion of resources needed to confront other social problems.
3. Do not make moral arguments about Ukrainian sovereignty, without balancing these with an analysis of the opportunity costs of NATO expansion regarding motivating or triggering Russian reactions.
4. Do not expect Russian regimes which you believe to be anti-democratic and thuggish, to engage in the NATO version of their good intentions.
5. Support glasnost regarding the underlying causes of the Yugoslav crisis, an openness which requires truth telling about the West’s culpability in aggravating that conflict (something I have analyzed here).
6. Create study circles that examine the history of militarism, disarmament, demilitarization, and the abuses of one-sided post-colonial arguments. Start with the work of C. Wright Mills, Seymour Melman, Marcus Raskin, Brian D’Agostino, Noam Chomsky, and blog posts of www.globalteachin.com.

Did a NATO Expansionist Trigger Exist?

There are very sophisticated arguments that have been deployed to argue that NATO enlargement did not trigger Putin’s aggression. Consider the argument of Kimberly Martin in “NATO enlargement: evaluating its consequences in Russia,” International Politics, 57 (2020): 401–426: “It is often claimed that NATO’s post-Cold War geographic enlargement threatened Russian security interests and caused the downturn in Russia’s relations with the West.” Martin “unpacks and challenges that causal claim”, and makes “three basic arguments”: “First, NATO enlargement made the alliance weaker. Russia knew this and did not react militarily to any perceived threat from Europe until after it seized Crimea in 2014. Second, the downturn in Russia’s relationship with the West was overdetermined and most likely caused by Russia’s reaction to its own declining influence in the world. While NATO’s geographic enlargement aggravated this situation, it was probably not the most significant causal factor. Third, while Russia certainly reacted negatively to NATO enlargement right from the start, the reaction was manipulated and magnified by both the nationalist opposition, and Vladimir Putin’s regime, to serve domestic political interests.”

The first problem I have with such an analysis is that it is very hard to disentangle “the domestic” from “the foreign.” For example, if we say that “the reaction was manipulated and magnified by both the nationalist opposition, and Vladimir Putin’s regime,” then that seems to be confusing a dependent variable with an independent one. In other words, NATO expansion probably empowered Russian militarists and gave them discursive material to engage in their own form of militarist expansion. The Iraq War might have been possible without any foreign causes, with one principal foreign cause being oil acquisition. Yet, the costs of gaining such oil were far outweighed by the value of the oil itself. This suggests a strong logic of internal motivations. Furthermore, anything Iraq did could not be considered as or framed for domestic power accumulation purposes as a threat to the US for any logical reason. It could be so framed as a threat for illogical reasons based on hegemonic lies, however. In the case of Ukraine, that country lies on Russia’s borders. The opportunity costs of attacking Ukraine were potentially high, as Russia would lose oil export revenue from the West. Even if much of this lost revenue was compensated for by sales to the China and India, there was an initial cost. So the politics of energy-based foreign policy differs in the two cases, making them that less analogous.

It appears that it was less in the US Biden Administration interest for Europe and Russia to have good ties, just like the US Trump Administration appears to believe that it is more in their interest to have good ties with Russia than large parts of liberal, NATO expansionist Europe. In any case, sometimes foreign causes trigger responses even if mediated by domestic regimes. Reducing the cause to a domestic one, is basically a kind of idealist or social constructionist form of self-deception. A related argument has been made by James Goldgeier and Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson in “Evaluating NATO enlargement: scholarly debates, policy implications, and roads not taken,” International Politics, 57 (2020): 291–321. They write: “we argue that the NATO enlargement debate does not lend itself to identification of a single aspect of enlargement’s legacy as its sine qua non. Instead, the distinct approaches and issues embraced by scholars (and NATO itself) underscore the need for a broad based effort to assess different aspects of enlargement, in order to arrive at a net assessment of enlargement for any or all of the actors involved.” They argue: “Although reinforcing US influence and dominance in Europe, enlargement has also obligated the USA to take on additional security commitments with less oversight of the issues involved, all while antagonizing Russia.” So these scholars are not afraid of deploying the verb, “antagonizing.” They add, while “enlargement did not uniquely cause Russian aggrandizement or opposition toward the West, but NATO’s post-Cold War centrality and Washington’s growing ambivalence toward Russian concerns about continued NATO enlargement certainly contributed to the downturn in East–West relations.”

In explaining Marten’s position, Goldgeier and Shifrinson write: “to the extent that enlargement contributed to current tensions, it was not because NATO threatened Russia, but because expansion highlighted Russia’s declining status. In the Russian assessment, the USA acted as if Russian interests were of limited importance and could be shaped by the West.” What does all this mean? Russia would react negatively to Ukraine’s part in NATO expansion because that was seen as being against their interests. So NATO or the USA ignoring Russia’s interests was a trigger for Russian intervention. So, one can argue using this framework that ignoring Russian interests helps trigger an intervention. The “ignoring,” however, is something that was within the USA and NATO’s control. When Trump does not ignore these interests, that is framed as a US domestic issue, but it is still a foreign policy cause vis-à-vis (or from the perspective of) Russia. In essence, we are brought back to something within the influence of not only Russia, but also the US and NATO. So a rather obvious moral deconstruction of Russian actions in Ukraine, tells us either very little or hardly enough. Russian motivations still enter the calculation as do actions by other states that may shape these motivations in support of military intervention.

I assume that Goldgeier and Shifrinson would not belie that the US and NATO are responsible for their actions which may or may not have been take in advance of US interests. They provide arguments that these actions of enlargement were not even in the US’s and NATO’s interests. We can add that the mess and tragedy created by the war created a serious risk to the US (as Biden Administration) and NATO project. This risk was exploited by the Trump Administration which could leverage the mess and tragedy to move against NATO expansionism. When all is said and done, NATO expansion was obviously not the sole cause, but still appears to be a central trigger as this analysis by Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne convincingly demonstrates. The underlying problem is how NATO proponents consistently moved against Russian interests, which liberal militarists rationalize as being a necessary step to combat Russian militarist evil. They defend this view by rationalizing any critique of NATO militarist evil as “whataboutism,” thereby rationalizing their embrace of NATO militarist evil and belying any alternatives to NATO as the ideal vehicle for organizing foreign policy in Ukraine, the Baltics or Poland, etc. Of course, NATO and militarists in the USA provoke Russia (through military expansionism) and ignore its interests and help justify NATO’s existence through the Russian reaction to these provocations. Or, alternatively, even if Russia provokes NATO, NATO plays along with these provocations and tries to keep the cycle of violence going, thereby helping to keep NATO and Russian militarism healthy, i.e. few confidence building mechanisms, demonization of trade and each others’ culture, downplaying diplomacy or advancing pseudo-diplomacy with the NATO and the US not advancing diplomacy in bad faith (e.g. Ukraine won’t be neutral as part of the deal).

Karadjis: Valid Points Combined with Displacement Mechanisms

A Discussion of Repression of the Russian Language in Ukraine

Let us start with the analysis of one article (identified by Elicit.com referenced below) on language use in Ukraine, by Olga Shumilo, Tanel Kerikmäe, and Archil Chochia in “Restrictions of Russian internet resources in Ukraine: national security, censorship or both?,” TalTech Journal of European Studies, 3 (2019): 82–95. The authors analyze “the ambiguous political decision to ban the major Russian web resources from access to the Ukrainian market, in spite of heavy criticisms from local and foreign experts.” These new policies were supported to be linked to the “cybersecurity priorities of the country”, the” but also exposed “the fragility of Euromaidan democratic heritage and drawbacks of the current political regime” in Ukraine. This “article concludes that Ukrainian post-Euromaidan governance model needs to consolidate…efforts in order to prove the commitment to freedom of speech as a core European value and replace spontaneous actions with an evidence-based approach to political decision-making.”

Svetlana Anatol’ L’nyavskiy-Ekelund, in a Masters Thesis at Lund University (Centre for Languages and Literature) in Sweden entitled, “Ukrainian Language Policy: The Status of Russian in English Language Medium Ukrainian and Russian Newspapers and in the Linguistic Landscape of Four Regions,” January 2016, (also referred to by Elicit.com below) does show how the language issue was exploited by certain pro-Russian elements, however: “How the language issues were used by the Russian Federation for simple justification of its relentless involvement into Ukrainian affairs at the beginning of the period under investigation from 2010 when the pro-Russian government in Ukraine secured its control over Ukrainian politics and economy, is clearly seen through the statements of Russian politicians and a gradual build up of a campaign of some kind of mythical threat to Russian and its users that was traced in comparative study of keyness in Ukrainian and Russian corpora. This campaign was orchestrated by Russian and Ukrainian political technologists and started as a way to win electoral votes by the politicians from the pro-Russian eastern part of the country” (page 109).

Nevertheless, an analysis by Tadeusz A. Olszański, “Ukrainians and their language: The Act on the State Language of Ukraine,” by the Centre for Eastern Studies based in Poland, June 11, 2019, claims that there was repression of Russian in Ukraine: “On 25 April [2019], the Supreme Council of Ukraine passed a law guaranteeing the role of the Ukrainian language as the state language. The act was passed with a significant majority (278 in favour, 38 against), and was signed into law by President Petro Poroshenko on 15 May. This is not an act on the state’s language policy, but the role of the official language in the life of the country. The act is clearly aimed at eliminating Russian from as many spheres of community life in Ukraine as possible, especially from education and the media. The other, equally important task is to ensure development, standardisation, and modernisation of the Ukrainian language where there are currently shortcomings.”

Karadjis’s View versus Other Claims

Karadjis starts off by debunking the following myth: “the new [Ukrainian] government in 2014 banned the Russian language.” Part of this argument is supported by reference to a map that sows that “President Zelensky was elected by Russian-speakers, whose language, we are told, he wants to ban (if not commit genocide against them).” The “genocide” claim may be false as is the ban on Russian language. Yet, Karadjis does not appear to appreciate that Zelensky portrayed himself as a reconciler with Russia but was later viewed as the opposite by many Russian speakers. So this sin of omission complicates matters. An article by Luke Harding in The Guardian (February 20, 2022) notes: “When Volodymyr Zelenskiy sought to become Ukraine’s president he stood on a platform of peace. Zelenskiy promised to sit down with Vladimir Putin and to reach a deal with Russia. He would end the unpopular war in the east and concentrate on important domestic reforms. These included ridding the country of corruption and oligarchs.” He continues: “But critics fear that by refusing to make concessions to Moscow, Zelenskiy is steering his country towards disaster. They argue he needs to find a pragmatic solution to the dangerous standoff with Putin – ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine, at least for now – a key Russian demand. The US and its allies would go along with such a declaration, privately breathing a sigh of relief, they argue. ‘The Russians will keep on until Zelenskiy gets the message,’ Vasyl Filipchuk, a former senior Ukrainian diplomat and foreign affairs spokesperson said. ‘They want him to stop what they see as anti-Russian rhetoric. A statement on Nato would calm the situation down. Moscow and Nato would be happy. A few in Ukraine’s establishment would be displeased.'” Don’t those in solidarity with Gaza have buyer’s remorse given the Biden Administration’s failure to sufficiently pressure Israeli militarists?

Further Evidence from Elicit.com and ChatGBT

Karadjis makes a series of claims about how the Ukrainian regime restrained or did not restrain Russian language use. I tested these claims and generated a report by Elicit, an AI search engine. I then used ChatGPT to evaluate Karadjis’s claims against this report. Elicit is a well-respected academic search engine. ChatGPT illustrates that Karadjis makes valid arguments, but begs the question as to how Russian interests in Ukraine were antagonized, thereby helping to provide Putin with a rationalization to invade Ukraine or attack it, even if these attacks are not morally justified. The moral responsibility of those engaging in such actions is often ignored by many who critique the moral validity of the response to such actions.

The ChatGBT Analysis (March 9, 2025): Critique of the Article “Ukraine Myth Series – Myth 2”

Here is a critique of the “Ukraine Myth Series – Myth 2” article based on the attached report, Ukrainian Language Policy Post-2009. [Emphasis through bold highlights added by J.M.F., except in headers and lists generated by ChatGBT]

1. Accuracy of Claims Regarding 2014 Language Policies

The article argues that no changes to language policy occurred in Ukraine in 2014 and that claims of a ban on Russian are false. This aligns partially with the report, which confirms that the most significant legal change restricting Russian came with the 2019 law “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language.” However, the report does document that post-2014 policies increasingly restricted Russian, particularly in media, education, and government services.

While the article is correct that there was no formal ban on Russian, it downplays the attempted 2014 repeal of the 2012 language law. The report notes that from 2014 onward, policies shifted toward promoting Ukrainian while limiting Russian, including in education and media, and that enforcement varied regionally, particularly in the east and south.

2. Oversight of Gradual Language Restrictions

The article emphasizes that the 2014 attempt to repeal the Yanukovych-era law did not succeed. However, the attached report highlights that language policy changes in Ukraine after 2014 moved in a direction that increasingly limited Russian usage, especially through legal mandates in public administration, education, and media. The report details:

• 2017: Education law limiting non-Ukrainian language instruction.
• 2017: Presidential decree banning Russian internet resources.
• 2019: Comprehensive restrictions on Russian in public domains.

Thus, while the article is technically correct that 2014 saw no immediate policy enforcement, it does not fully acknowledge the broader trend of increasing restrictions on Russian in the years that followed.

3. Incomplete Discussion of the 2019 Language Law

The article acknowledges that the 2019 law partially downgraded Russian but suggests that it was not uniquely harsh compared to global norms. The report, however, explicitly states that the 2019 law imposed comprehensive mandates requiring Ukrainian across nearly all public domains, impacting media, government, and education. Unlike the article, the report notes concerns over:

• Media Restrictions: Russian-language publications required to have equivalent Ukrainian versions.
• Education Policies: Transition to Ukrainian-only instruction beyond primary school.
• Public Administration: Mandatory Ukrainian use in official communications.

The report suggests these changes were highly restrictive and had regional resistance, particularly in eastern and southern Ukraine. This contradicts the article’s attempt to downplay the law’s impact.

4. Contextual Omissions: Resistance and Compliance

The article correctly points out that Russian remained widely spoken in Ukraine, but it overlooks regional enforcement disparities and resistance, which the report details:

• In South and East Ukraine, compliance with language policies was lower, and local opposition persisted.
• Varying degrees of enforcement resulted in tensions between national policy and local language preferences.

This nuance is missing from the article, which presents a binary argument (either the language was banned or it wasn’t) rather than recognizing the gradual and regionally uneven restrictions detailed in the report.

5. Double Standard in Comparing Ukraine and Russia

The article argues that pro-Russian narratives hypocritically ignore Russia’s suppression of Ukrainian in Crimea and Donbas. While this point is valid, it does not address the main concern of language rights within Ukraine itself. The report provides an objective analysis of Ukraine’s policies, without using Russia’s actions as a counterpoint. The focus should be on whether Ukraine’s policies restricted Russian rather than how they compare to Russian policies.

Conclusion

While the article correctly debunks the myth that Russian was outright banned in 2014, it oversimplifies Ukraine’s language policy developments. The attached report provides evidence of increasing restrictions on Russian, particularly post-2014, which the article downplays. A more nuanced discussion acknowledging both the absence of a 2014 ban and the gradual post-2014 limitations on Russian would provide a more balanced perspective.

Post-Script: Deepseek’s View

I asked the Chinese-based deepseek AI program to evaluate my analysis above on March 9, 2025. It offered some editorial suggestions, but I was most interested in its assessment of my comments. Note the AI content above was based on US-based AI programs.

1. Clear Purpose and Focus:
   • The post has a clear purpose: to critique Michael Karadjis’s arguments and provide an alternative perspective on NATO expansion, Russian militarism, and Ukrainian language policies. It successfully establishes its thesis early on and maintains focus throughout.
2. Strong Argumentation:
   • You present a well-reasoned critique of Karadjis’s claims, particularly his dismissal of NATO expansion as a trigger for Russian aggression. Your use of scholarly sources (e.g., Kimberly Marten, Goldgeier and Shifrinson) adds credibility to your arguments.
   • The distinction between “domestic” and “foreign” causes of Russian aggression is particularly compelling. You effectively argue that NATO expansion cannot be dismissed as irrelevant, even if it is not the sole cause of Russian actions.
3. Nuanced Perspective:
   • Your post avoids simplistic binaries (e.g., “Russia bad, NATO good”) and instead acknowledges the complexity of the situation. For example, you critique both NATO expansion and Russian militarism, highlighting how each side contributes to the cycle of conflict.
   • The discussion of Ukrainian language policies is nuanced, acknowledging both the validity of Karadjis’s claims and their limitations. The use of AI tools like Elicit and ChatGPT to evaluate his arguments adds a modern, data-driven dimension to your critique.
4. Engagement with Scholarly Debates:
   • By referencing academic works and engaging with their arguments, you situate your post within broader scholarly debates. This elevates the discussion beyond mere opinion and into the realm of informed analysis.
5. Balanced Tone:
   • The tone is measured and analytical, avoiding overly emotional or polemical language. This makes your arguments more persuasive and accessible to a wide audience.