Thanks to my friend, comrade, and co-host of Crawdads and Taters, Erin McCarley, for bringing this letter to my attention. What follows is based on a message I sent to her, which she recommended I publish.
I recommend reading the original Open Letter to Noam Chomsky (and other like-minded intellectuals) on the Russia-Ukraine war before reading my response. While I do not always agree with Chomsky, on this topic my position is more in line with him than with the establishment narrative. For more on the Ukraine war, please listen to Ukraine: A US-Proxy for the New Cold War Era - Part I.
This letter was written by Bohdan Kukharskyy, City University of New York, Anastassia Fedyk, University of California, Berkeley, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California, Berkeley, and Ilona Sologoub, VoxUkraine NGO. The first three are all professors of economics in the US. The last, Ilona Sologoub, served as Director of Economic Policy Studies at the Kyiv School of Economics.
This letter reads like it was written by Biden’s PR (propaganda relations) department. It is really just imperialist talking points to justify sending more weapons and giving contracts to corporations. I find it interesting that the authors of this letter are all economists. It appears that they all fall well within the realm of neoclassical economics, though I did not research their backgrounds too thoroughly. This begs the question - why did they not address anything of the economic situation in their letter to Chomsky? Should not that be what they are qualified to address? Yet the letter is lacking in important economic facts.
Any Marxist analysis of the war begins with the economics and how the shock doctrine wrecked the economies of post Soviet states. There is no mention of this in their letter or of how the US uses the International Monetary Fund as a hammer to break open new markets. One of Ukraine’s largest oil and gas companies is Naftogaz which is state owned. This makes them a prime target for US intervention as we saw with the Maidan. Yanukovych’s rejection of the IMF loan was about the austerity measures it required, not about being a Russian puppet or against joining the EU. This was detailed by Foreign Policy: The Loan That Launched A Crisis.
This was common knowledge at the time of Maidan - as Foreign policy, a mainstream publication, reported during the height of the protests. But these bourgeois economists ignore these key economic factors and choose to focus on the war itself and Ukrainian agency - whatever that means with a U.S. puppet state that is being firmly controlled through IMF policies. They focus on the western media talking points of Putin as instigator and demon. They seek to obfuscate by distracting from the history of the conflict and repeat the myths that Crimea was annexed at gun point and that Maidan was a popular insurrection. They even try to redefine Nazism to distract from the actual Nazi problem which has been reported on by nearly every mainstream media outlet up until February of this year, when they fell silent on the matter. It is blatant revisionism and clear propaganda but it follows the narrative established by the corporate press.
In addition to ignoring the economic factors, they also completely ignore the Russian strategy which fully indicates that they are not attempting to conquer and occupy but rather are focusing on demilitarization. As economists they can’t be expected to understand the Clausewitzian concept of center of gravity though. They would be better off staying away from topics of which they know so little. Speculation that Putin is attempting to conquer Ukraine simply does not fit the strategic situation on the ground.
As Ukrainians, I understand that the authors of this letter must be concerned about the people of Ukraine. War is always a terrible endeavor and it is the working class who suffer, not the oligarchs. But this concern should not stop us from presenting an actual analysis of the situation based on material conditions, rather than western propaganda and hearsay. Noam Chomsky is a long established intellectual who is highly respected for his work in numerous fields including linguistics, history, philosophy, politics, and war. The fact that he is being attacked for telling the truth about Ukraine now shows the lengths the US will go to manufacture consent for this proxy war.
Thanks for providing this excellent retort to the Open Letter, of which, I confess, I was previously unaware. At your suggestion, I read that first. I was angered at several points, as I have spent considerable time reviewing the history and context of the crisis that led to Russia's invasion, and the authors of that letter clearly ignore and elide much of the salient history and facts that show the falsity of their claims. What kind of academic does that, other than those who have already sold out principle for some personal gain?
I suppose the authors may simply be repeating the western propaganda due to prior nationalistic leanings; or perhaps it is as you suggest, out of some concern for the Ukrainians who suffer the consequences. At any rate, the kind of response they encourage is almost certainly NOT going to protect the Ukrainian citizens, and to whatever extent Ukraine is further militarized and Russia threatened by encirclement, will likely make those people less secure and less assured of Ukraine's future autonomy.
Yet they dismiss out of hand any negotiations to resolve Russia's demands, which very many scholars, as well as experienced diplomats, military and diplomatic officers, as well as international relations scholars, have said could have, and should have been addressed long before, if just peace was actually the interest of the U.S. and its creature, NATO.