September 7, 2022
Review of How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How US and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe, by Benjamin Abelow, Siland Press
The Ukraine war has generated great controversy, but of one point there can be no doubt, and Benjamin Abelow, a physician with a longstanding interest in public affairs, has properly emphasized this in his brief and excellent book. The policy of the United States toward the war, and more generally toward the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin, has been one of direct confrontation rather than peaceful accommodation. It is hardly a surprise that supporters of a noninterventionist policy have criticized the United Sates for this, but a number of those in the foreign policy “establishment” have done so as well, and Abelow has been able to secure the endorsement of some of these for his book. Jack Matlock Jr., for example, the last American ambassador to the Soviet Union, writes that the book is a “brilliant, remarkably concise explanation of the danger that U.S. and NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] military involvement in Ukraine has created.”
