An important ingredient in geopolitics is controlling the narrative. To tell a positive and compelling story from your point of view. During the Russia, Ukraine stand-off United States President Joe Biden tried controlling the narrative with regular intelligence-based predictions as to when Russia will invade.

It should be understood that even with Biden and the Western media singing in unison from the same hymnal, the rhetoric does not paint a complete picture of the situation.

To this day many people’s view of the Cuban missile crisis is Russia being the aggressor wanting to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, 90 miles from mainland USA. The narrative is that US President John F Kennedy held his nerve during all the tension and drama, while Leader or Soviet Russia Nikita Khrushchev blinked under pressure and withdrew missiles and bombers from Cuba. We were served the Hollywood ending — Kennedy and the USA triumphed and averted a nuclear catastrophe over the evil and warmongering Russia. The truth is quite different.

The Washington Post reported that what precipitated the Cuban nuclear crisis was the US’s deployment of new missiles in Italy, England, and, most importantly, Turkey, right on the Soviet border, all pointing toward Moscow. There was little publicity about this.

Khrushchev and other Soviet officials complained long and loud against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) basing of those missiles with little publicity or effect. Russia finally responded in kind, with an attempt to place its own missiles in Cuba pointing towards USA. The impasse was resolved not by Khrushchev blinking, but by Kennedy blinking, agreeing to defuse its missiles based in Turkey. So leaders lie, and when it comes to war the media gets nationalistic and either support the lie or suppress the truth.

John Mearsheimer, political scientist, wrote a book in 2011 titled Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics. Mearsheimer created a typology, a framework of primarily five types of lies told in international affairs:

(1) Inter-state: Lies told to obtain an advantage or deny another State an advantage;

(2) Fearmongering: Lies told to inflate a threat to prompt a public to understand the threat;

(3) Strategic lies: Hiding information from their publics and other states which could harm a nation;

(4) Nationalist myths: Lying about a country’s past to concoct a positive story about a country; and

(5) Liberal lies: Deceptively attributing actions to a devotion to liberal/humanitarian norms.

So Mearsheimer has provided a useful framework to evaluate and possible identify why and when leaders lie.

Let’s now examine what is happening in the Russia, Ukraine crisis. Since the end of the cold war, the US and NATO have expanded into former Soviet bloc countries, mainly Romania and Poland. In 2016 the USA and NATO established missile defence system in Romania, which Russia opposed and considered it a threat to its national security.

Andrew Higgins, New York Times journalist, recently reported that the USA and NATO are establishing a highly sensitive US military installation, expected to be operational this year, which Washington insists will help defend Europe and the US from ballistic missiles fired by rogue states like Iran. The report continues: The Polish base, the heart of which is a system known as Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System (AAMDS), contains sophisticated radars capable of tracking hostile missiles and guiding interceptor rockets to knock them out of the sky. It is also equipped with missile launchers known as MK 41s, which the Russians worry can be easily repurposed to fire offensive missiles like the Tomahawk. Both the Polish and Romanian sites employ Aegis Ashore.

The Russians are extremely upset with the Polish deployment, which is located in a sparsely populated village of Redzikowo, only about 100 miles from Russian territory and barely 800 miles from Moscow itself. President Vladimir Putin has demanded that NATO reduce its military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe — which Washington and European leaders have flatly refused to do. The New York Times reports that the Pentagon has describes the two sites as defensive and unrelated to Russia, but the Kremlin believes they could be used to shoot down Russian rockets or to fire offensive cruise missiles at Moscow.

The current USA-articulated stance is undermined by remarks made at a 2019 USA Missile Defense Review in which former President Donald Trump stated that the goal of US missile defences is to “ensure we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States — anywhere, any time, any place”. This 2019 comment by Trump expanded the scope of US missile defences to confront Russia and China more assertively. This will likely create closer bonds between both.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has indicated the country’s willingness to join the European Union and NATO. Public polls have suggested that the majority of the population supports the president’s position. This does not mean that Ukraine will join the EU or NATO; however, the possibility of this poses an existential threat to Russia. Russia anticipates that the USA and NATO will establish missile system in Ukraine which borders Russia.

Russia great power status is predicated on its vast nuclear arsenal and its security is based on the doctrine of mutual destruction — principle of deterrence founded on the notion that a nuclear attack by one superpower would be met with an overwhelming nuclear counter-attack such that both the attacker and the defender would be annihilated.

NATO’s expansion into Romania, Poland, and possibly Ukraine would/will undermine the current security infrastructure in Europe. Make no mistake that Russia would like to regain all its Soviet bloc countries; however, that’s not on the table.

So the rhetoric from Biden that Ukraine is a sovereign, democratically elected Government and should be entitled to self-determination is true, but utopian myth. This only happens if you have a big gun like your aggressor. North Korea has shown that only with nuclear weapons can this be achieved, and not without great pain. Note that since former US President Barack Obama visited Jamaica in 2015 this notion of a Chinese port at Goat Islands has not been mentioned in polite circles. I wonder what would be the US’s and NATO’s reaction if Russia declared that it would establish a missile defence system in Venezuela and or Cuba.

Returning to why leaders lie. Biden’s strategy with regular intelligence updates on what Russia is going to do next would amount to fearmongering: See Mearsheimer. Putin’s initial strategy about the troop build-up on the Ukraine border and that he has no intention to invade is inter-state: See Mearsheimer.

This is all par for the course, leaders lie to their citizens and in international politics. Ukraine is caught in the middle.

In 1918 we had a war followed by a pandemic. In 2022 will be have the reverse; a pandemic followed by a war. The stakes are high; however, mutual blinking and effective lying is a solution.

Professor Paul Golding is former dean of the College of Business and Management at the University of Technology, Jamaica. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or pgolding@utech.edu.jm.