Did the US really take Russia’s NATO concerns ‘very seriously’?

Great analysis for anyone open-minded enough to bypass left and right-wing reactionary responses and actually discuss ways the Russian war on Ukraine might have been avoided and how it might yet be resolved. https://t.co/OBcrVRwJat

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 28, 2022

Responsible Statecraft’s Alex Jordan writes, “Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to contradict one of his top deputies in an exchange with Sen. Rand Paul before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, re-igniting questions about the Biden administration’s diplomatic strategy in the months leading up to Russia’s illegal and aggressive war on Ukraine.

Of course, the media chatter surrounding yesterday’s hearing largely ignored the latest evidence that U.S. diplomats missed a potential opportunity to prevent Russia’s war, focusing instead on conflating Paul’s attempts to explain Russia’s actions with efforts to justify them.

I’d encourage you to watch their full exchange.

Sen. Paul opened his comments by saying that ‘while there is no justification for Putin’s war on Ukraine, it does not follow that there’s no explanation for the invasion.’ Yet during his testimony, Sec. Blinken seemingly rejected the need for any further exploration of Russia’s motivations, instead asserting the same, dangerous combination of over-certainty and incuriousness about the ‘the other side’ that has fueled so many disastrous U.S. foreign policy decisions…

In fact, more than 30 years of analysis from U.S. foreign policy leaders like Burns, George Kennan, and Fiona Hill indicates that NATO’s expansion is, in fact, a core security concern for Russia; it is in this context that Sen. Paul challenged the wisdom of a Nov. 2021 statement reaffirming U.S. support for Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, asking Blinken to explain how the administration weighed the imperative to avert a Russian invasion against their desire to keep NATO’s door ‘open’ to Ukraine (despite ‘knowing full well’ that Ukraine was unlikely to join the alliance).”

Read the entire column.