Essay About Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

Genocide is defined as the intentional destruction of a nation or group of people based on their ethnic/racial background. To be considered a genocide, acts such as “Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; [and/or] Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” must be demonstrated (U.N.). The term was first coined in relation to the Nazi’s systemic murder of Jewish individuals and is now used as a classification of international crime.

Russia’s ignominious attitude towards Ukraine most prominently began in the 19th century as the Russian Empire overtook political control of Ukraine and began suppressing Ukrainian culture and language. In 1922, the newly independent Ukraine SSR (soviet socialist republic) voluntarily entered the Soviet Union, due to its fertile soil, Ukraine SSR acted as a primary supplier of food for the USSR’s large population; to increase agricultural efficiency Ukraine’s agrarian sector was modernized, and as a whole the nation industrialized. The rapid industrialization led to mass famines, causing internal conflict within Ukraine SSR as civilians called for independence from the USSR. Independence was formally achieved in 1991. In 2021, Russia began to build up a military presence surrounding Ukraine’s borders despite warnings from other western countries. On February 24, 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to enter Ukraine. Following the invasion, instances of devastation among Ukrainian civilians have been reported including repeated cases of sexual assault, formal executions, and property destruction. The people targeted by these attacks are not soldiers engaged in the conflict, they are Ukrainian people being killed by Russian militia because they are Ukrainian. These abuses are direct violations of acts defining genocide, specifically the killing of group members and the cause of mental or physical harm to group members. These cruelties fall under the persecution stage of genocide which is defined as the “beginning of murders, theft of property, [and start of] trial massacres” (Holocaust Center of Pittsburg).

The Russian leader's primary objective was to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, effectively preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. If Ukraine were to join this western alliance, Russia would be limited in their influence over the region and could no longer exert political control, further diminishing Russia’s political and economic dominance over Eastern Europe- a battle they’ve been fighting sense the USSRs collapse. However, the message Putin presented to Russian citizens and attempted to spread to the media, was that his goal was to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine", refusing to call it an invasion or war, just a "special military operation" (BBC). In doing so, Putin aimed to polarize the people within Ukraine, making them out to be Nazis- polarization is considered the sixth stage of genocide. Western media was quick to denounce Putin’s claimed intentions, instead criticizing his actions as just another example of “the ability of autocrats and malign actors to [attempt to] completely brainwash us” (NYT).

U.S. oil corporations began probing the Iraqi region for profitable opportunities in the 1910s, going on to gain nearly a 25% share in the highly profitable Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) by 1928 (Congressional Research Service). Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. generally deferred to British officials, who managed Iraq as a League of Nations mandate, when it came to foreign affairs with Iraq. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. encouraged the IPC to increase oil production and to contribute a greater portion of revenues to the Iraqi government. In 1958, a coalition of Iraqi military officers, dissatisfied by the monarchy's subservience to the West, overthrew the government and instituted a new, anti-western regime. In the early 1970s, Iraq nationalized U.S. petroleum interests and partnered with the Soviet Union to expand its oil facilities. Angered that they could no longer profit on nationalized oil, U.S. officials covertly equipped rebels in order to weaken the Iraqi government. This conquest ultimately failed, resulting only in Iraq’s renewed interest in anti-U.S. policies.

In 2002, President George W Bush identified Iraq as part an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address. This labelling of Iraq as evil aided in the polarization of the nation, and acted as a precursor to the western story that the Iraq war was self defense. and  Soon after the speech, the UK published a dossier on the apparent threat posed by Iraq. It included the claim that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction which could be used within 45 minutes. In 2003 The UN's Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission carried out 700 inspections, each time failing to find any weapons of mass destruction.  Months later ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ begins with a campaign of aerial bombardment; bombs are dropped on a farming community outside Baghdad where intelligence falsely suggested Saddam Hussein may be hiding. 2003 and on, protestors in Iraq began targeting US-backed forces and fighting erupted between rival militias. The U.S. military asserted the end of the Iraq War in December 15, 2011, as U.S. troops prepared to withdraw from the country.

Throughout their occupation of Iraq, U.S. forced assaulted and killed thousands of Iraqi civilians; permissive "rules of engagement" were established, allowing troops to use "deadly force" against virtually any perceived threat (Global Policy Forum). Consequently, the US and its allies regularly killed Iraqi civilians at checkpoints on the basis of remote suspicion, classifying any and all Iraqi people as “the enemy”. US forces also killed many Iraqi civilians during military operations and air strikes, these attacks being pre-meditated and targeted towards innocent bystanders implies that they were motivated by a desire to eradicate the Iraqi people, not just advance war strategy. This distinctively systematic murder of Iraqi people through pre-meditated military-based strikes fall under the extermination stage of genocide, evidently akin to the previously described persecution stage currently displayed in Ukraine.

The U.S. has inevitably acknowledged, the Iraq war, not attempting to conceal the military presence in Iraq, however, the U.S. has repeatedly refused to acknowledge their assaults on Iraqi citizens. During Obama’s presidency, he declared that “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue, but this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands” (LA Times). The U.S. has, and continues, to reduce the Iraq war to a ‘war on terror’, justifying any and all deaths as simply unintentional collateral damage to a fight for a better, terror free, world. Since the war, tragedies such as Haditha massacre have come to light through cases of investigative journalism, not U.S. officials. When presented with evidence of the Haditha massacre, the U.S. military personals responsible were dismissed of any criminal charges. This denial of intentional massacre against innocent Iraqi civilians is consistent with the denial stage of genocide, in which “the government denies that it has committed any crime” (Holocaust Center of Pittsburg).

The official, and widely-accepted, story remains that Washington was motivated by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program, his nuclear capabilities were deemed sufficiently alarming to incite the war. Despite Saddam not actually having an active WMD program, this explanation has found support among some International Relations scholars, who say the US government “reasonably misread the evidence on the dangers Saddam posed” (Al Jazeera). The problem with this thesis is that there is no evidence for it, beyond the words of the Bush officials who, themselves, began the war. The obvious lack of Iraq’s WMDs, given that no nuclear weapons were found over 700 investigations, indicates that the U.S. was not attacking for the sake of preventing terrorism, or for other goals, such as a desire to spread democracy or satisfy the oil demand, rather, the Bush administration invaded Iraq for its demonstrative effect. A decisive victory at the center of the Arab world would communicate to all countries, that “American hegemony would prevail” (Al Jazeera). The Iraq war was motivated by a desire to establish American standing as the world’s leading power, through elimination of the Iraqi people.

The United State’s intentions throughout the Iraq war closely parallel those of Russia in their invasion of Ukraine. Each nation sought to destroy a state and its people for sake of political supremacy; this aligns with the definition of genocide, outlined in the first paragraph, in that the nations went beyond expected war casualties to specifically target civilians of the respective nationality. While the Russia-Ukraine conflict is ongoing and the Iraq war is done, each conflict has especially been demonstrative of the persecution and extermination stages of genocide, along with other stages leading up to persecution, including polarization and others not explicitly addressed. Furthermore, the U.S. has formally solidified their acts as a genocide in their denial of any large-scale violence against Iraqi people.

The irony of western media denouncing Putin and Russia’s actions, considering how closely former President Bush’s and President Obama’s actions mirror current events, is hypocritical to a dangerous point in which the United States is able to get away with tragic crimes while painting themselves as the ever-enlightened activist.