(Courthouse News) Marlene Laruelle, the director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, says the West needs to look at itself in the mirror and see it also helped create conditions for war to break out in Ukraine.
It’s become almost a taboo: In the West, bring up the role of NATO and the harm done by decades of “Russia bashing” as causes for the outbreak of war in Ukraine and you can get labeled a “traitor” and “apologist” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“For me, the war is Putin’s responsibility, but the strategic deadlock that preceded it has been co-created by Russia and the West, with misunderstanding on both sides, and responsibilities on both sides,” said Marlene Laruelle, a French political philosopher and Russia expert who heads the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. “Whenever you try to bring in some nuance, then you get the accusation of being on Putin’s side.”
Laruelle, a highly respected Russia scholar and author of several books on post-Soviet politics, said in fact the West bears shared responsibility for creating some of the conditions for war to erupt in Ukraine.
“Since the collapse of the communist world, there has been a kind of unipolarity moment and a vision by the U.S. and some of its partners that it would be easy to rebuild a world order where they would be dominating, especially on the European continent,” Laruelle said in a telephone interview and emails with Courthouse News. […]
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