NATO Set Precedents for Russia’s Attack on Ukraine

With all of those offenses on the U.S.-NATO ledger, it is a bit much to watch US and European leaders act as though Russia’s assault on Ukraine is utterly outside the norm. Indeed, the Western track record demonstrates that the concept of a U.S.-led, rules-based international order is little more than a self-serving fiction. The United States and its allies have abided by those “rules” only when it has been in their interest to do it. Whenever it served their purposes to ignore or even flagrantly violate those rules, they never hesitated to do so. The brutal truth is that the Western powers set m