Ashish Purswaney

411590070
Critical Issues in Globalization
Final Reflection

Workstation Reflection
I’d like to preface this by saying I don’t believe in the conspiracy theories that the Russian
invasion of Ukraine was planned or set up by the West, nor do I believe the justification of
“de-nazification” of Ukraine and then the blame shifting towards NATO that President
Vladimir Putin gave in the first two years of his “special military operation,” which in reality
was a full fledged invasion of a sovereign nation. With that being said however, I am a firm
believer of hearing both sides to every story and seeing the two sides of the coin. Rarely is
there a case where simply knowing a single perspective will help you build an all
encompassing knowledge of the case. That was the goal which James, Ruby, and I had when
building this presentation. It began with an article by Jeffery Sachs which I read which used
the US example in Afghanistan to warn the Ukrainians of the future. In this article, I saw a
perspective which was much less pro-west than that of the NYT, WSJ, or BBC, my other
main sources of information on the conflict in Ukraine. One thing that stood out to me which
I would like to point out is the importance of getting information. In grade school, our
librarian taught us ways to look T information on the internet through the lense of credibility.
This included things like checking the spelling on the websites, whether hyperlinks worked or
not, whether the sources were real etc. A very important technique was researching the author
which I did after reading the article. I learned that Sachs was a pioneer on the global
environmentalism stage, pushing forward the 2000 MDG’s for poverty liberation and the
SDGs for the UN. Despite his great track record, I found some more clues as to the type of
person Sachs is, but this time not so good. Throughout the article, he’d use the term “special
military operation” which was a red flag for me because this was clearly a sign of echoing
Russian propaganda which does not want to call the war in Ukraine what it is, a devestating
war. With this information, I made the decision to be mindful and take Sachs’ words with a
grain of salt. I don’t believe that one’s political affiliation directly discredit their opinion,
however I believe that their political bias should be taken into account when evaluating
information. For this reason I decided to give him some merit and go deeper into the
allegation that NATO, with the backing of the US pushed Russia into the war. By supplying
Ukrainian troops with air defense technology, training, weapons, and money, the US is by
definition committing proxy warfare against Russia. The only reason that it isn’t a full blown
war between the superpowers is because the US has not sent troops to fight on the ground.
This is a factual claim but the US denies being in a proxy war because they are acting in
defense. However according to Russia, NATO would not have to defend Ukraine if they had
followed their promise after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to stop adding new members to NATO
and to stop moving more weapons towards Russian borders. Here we see the two sides I
mentioned earlier. On the one hand, the West sees Ukraine being attacked by Russia and in a
bid to defend democracy, they’ve decided to defend it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
On the other hand, Russia sees Ukraine as a friend who is slowly further distancing
themselves, leaving Russia more and more alone. Now their friend is becoming friend with
their enemy, and their enemies have been moving weapons, some even of mass destruction.
The friend of my enemy is my enemy. Putin sees Ukraine as the last and most important
domino and he is laying all his card on the table to keep it from falling. Pre-2014, Putin has
control over Russia, but also puppeteer control over Belarus and Ukraine through the
pro-Russian Lukashenko and Yanakovich respectively, however when Yanakovich left and a
pro-West leader came into power, Russia lost half of its European friends, and a huge part of
its buffer zone. When threatened, humans go into a fight, flight, fawn, or freeze mode. When
you have nuclear bombs and a cabinet that kowtows to whatever you say, fight begins to
seem like the best option and I think that when breaking it down into it’s fundamental pieces,
that’s what the war in Ukraine is.