Glenn Diessen - UN Security Council Speech on Ukraine, Media Narratives, and Security Competition
For the full content of this gist, refer to https://gist.github.com/jokull/3da2a52bc5612cd06112d73c546665c5
Jökull Sólberg Auðunsson@jokull
For the full content of this gist, refer to https://gist.github.com/jokull/3da2a52bc5612cd06112d73c546665c5
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTB_0TkJRlE
The following is my speech given at the UN Security Council in New York. I was supposed to be there in person, although my flight was cancelled without any replacement flights to get me there on time. Nonetheless, here is my speech and afterward I will give some comments to further extend upon my argument.
[Introduction by moderator]
And now I would like to give the floor to our first briefer. You will hear from Professor Glenn Diessen, a political analyst, expert on European security and Russian foreign policy, who has published extensively on geopolitics. Today, he will discuss how the conflict in Ukraine unfolds not only on the front line, but also in the information space, examining how media narratives shape public perception and influence the risks of escalation. Mr. Diessen, we wanted to welcome you here in New York, but please have the floor.
Thank you. I wish I could have been there in person, but thank you for the invitation and it's a great privilege to speak here today. I want to address how the conflict in Ukraine takes place as you said both on the battlefield and in the information space and why we should be concerned about the media manipulating narratives as well as demonizing the adversary.
Some of the most insightful literature about political propaganda comes from Walter Lippmann following his work for the US government during the first world war. Lippmann recognized that liberal democracies tended to present conflicts as a struggle between good and evil to mobilize public support for war. The great risk according to Lippmann was that once the public believed that the adversary was pure evil, well then the public and the politicians would also then reject any workable peace because in a struggle between good and evil compromise is appeasement and peace demands that war is fought as good must defeat evil.
So this is deeply problematic because the point of departure in international security is the recognition of the security competition as efforts by one country to enhance its security can diminish the security of others. So the first step toward a common peace is therefore to place ourselves in the shoes of our opponent and recognize these mutual security concerns. However, in a struggle between good and evil, even understanding the opponent becomes treasonous. We should therefore be terrified that our political leaders as well as the media no longer even discuss the security concerns of adversaries. Those attempting to see the world from the other side are simply denounced as Putinists, panda huggers, or Ayatollah apologists. If the generations before us had this level of maturity, it's highly unlikely we would have survived the Cold War.
So, it's very evident that the media does not always report on objective reality. Convinced that they're fighting the good fight, the media often socially constructs its own reality and journalists become information warriors. For example, recognizing the losses of the Ukrainian armed forces threatens to reduce public support for the war. Similarly, recognizing that sanctions do not work threatens to reduce public support for sanctions. So, the media often ignores these realities and instead stay loyal to the narratives to ensure that the public remains committed to the conflict. But as Lippmann noted, thereby they also remove all pathways toward a workable peace.
We therefore see that Russia must play this dual role in the media as we've all seen. On one hand, it has to be both hopelessly backwards and weak. Yet, it's also an overwhelmingly powerful threat to the West. So, we're told that Russia is unsuccessful in Ukraine, yet it can also conquer Europe if we don't stop it. This is intended to communicate to the western public that the adversary is very dangerous yet also reassure the public that Russia can easily be defeated if we just keep the war going.
So the foundational narrative in the media during this conflict has been the so-called unprovoked invasion by Russia. This is an important narrative because it implies that Russia is an expansionist and imperialist power as opposed to responding to security threats. There is no debate about the narrative of an unprovoked invasion in the media and any challenge to this narrative is usually smeared and censored for allegedly legitimizing the invasion. And I say that the unprovoked invasion narrative is dangerous because it implies that any compromise is appeasement that rewards the aggressor, which then incentivizes further aggression. Thus, we're told that peace demands supplying weapons to elevate the costs.
Now, as with any other conflict after the cold war, we see that the media described the opponents as yet another reincarnation of Hitler to remind the public that war is peace and diplomacy is appeasement or as the former NATO secretary general argued, the weapons are the path to peace. Again, this is a dangerous narrative because if this conflict was provoked, then we are escalating and getting directly involved in a war against the world's largest nuclear power, which considers itself to be in an existential conflict.
And we've seen that since the 1990s, many leading Western politicians, intelligence chiefs, ambassadors, and other diplomats warned exactly about these consequences of expanding NATO. NATO expansion entailed cancelling agreements for pan European security and instead redivide the continent, restart the logic of the cold war and then fight in the shared neighborhood over where to draw the new dividing lines. Again, none other than George Kennan stated in an interview back in 1998 that NATO expansionism would start a new cold war. And he predicted, quote, "Of course, there's going to be a bad reaction from Russia." And then the NATO expanders will say, "We always told you that is how the Russians are, but this is just wrong."
However, we do see that the media cannot recognize the obvious that NATO expansion provoked this conflict because this then risks legitimizing Russian military actions. Yet, NATO countries crossed the ultimate red line by pulling Ukraine into the NATO orbit and developing it into a frontline state against Russia. Keep in mind, Angela Merkel once recognized that offering Ukraine a membership action plan for NATO would be interpreted by Moscow as quote "a declaration of war." The former British ambassador to Russia, Rodric Lyne, said the following about pulling Ukraine into NATO. Quote, "It was stupid on every level at that time. If you want to start a war with Russia, that's the best way of doing it." In a note by the CIA director William Burns, he also argued that attempting to pull Ukraine into NATO would likely trigger a Russian military intervention, which Burns noted was something Russia would not want to do.
Now, these all seem like excellent definitions of the word "provoked." Yet, we cannot use this word. And in February of 2014, NATO countries nonetheless backed a coup to pull Ukraine into the NATO orbit. The media nonetheless sold the coup as a democratic revolution even though Yanukovych was elected in a free and fair election. His removal and even the riots on the Maidan did not have majority support among Ukrainians and it violated the Ukrainian constitution.
And for a brief moment in 2014, the western media reported that the new authorities in Kyiv were attacking Donbas, killing civilians who rejected the legitimacy of the coup. And CNN even questioned if the people of Donbas would ever again allow Kyiv to rule over them. Yet soon thereafter, full media conformity was implemented and the resistance in Donbas was portrayed as a mere Russian operation aiming to oppose Ukraine's democratization.
Now, we have now learned that on the first day after the coup, American and British intelligence agencies set up a partnership with the new intelligence chief in Kyiv to rebuild Ukrainian intelligence services from scratch as a proxy against Russia. We learned that the Ukrainian general prosecutor argued that the US was running Ukraine as a fief after the coup. We learned that members of parliament were arrested. Some were stripped of their citizenship. The media was purged. The Russian language was purged. The Orthodox church was purged. And civilians in Donbas were killed for year after year. Nationalists and Western financed NGOs undermined the Minsk 2 peace agreement and set clear redlines for Zelensky not to implement the peace mandate which he had won in 2019.
And we saw that a top adviser to the former president of France argued that the signing of the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership in November 2021 quote "convinced Russia that it must attack or be attacked." I think it's safe to say that had Russia or China done any of these things, say, to Mexico, we would have surely have defined it as provocative. Yet we can't do this in our media.
So to sell the story of a Russian war of conquest, the media from day one promoted the notion of a "full-scale invasion," suggesting that Russia uses full military might to conquer Ukraine as opposed to forcing Ukraine to restore its neutrality. And for this reason, we see that the media they can't inform the public that the low Russian troop levels and initial actions were completely inconsistent with conquest. Rather, it indicated the intention of keeping Ukraine out of NATO.
The media can't inform the public that on the first day of the invasion, Zelensky confirmed that they had been contacted by Moscow to discuss peace negotiations based on Ukraine not joining NATO, which Zelensky agreed to.
The media can't inform the public about how Zelensky himself said in March of 2022. Quote, "There are those in the West who don't mind a long war because this would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives."
So the media can also not inform the public about the sabotage of the Istanbul peace negotiations after which the Turkish foreign minister concluded quote "I had the impression that there are those within NATO member states that want the war to continue. Let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don't care much about the situation in Ukraine."
So instead of having the media discuss a European security architecture that could mitigate the security competition and prevent Ukraine from being a battlefield in a redivided Europe, the media instead has demonized Russia as pure evil sold the story that even diplomacy should be rejected. Even as hundreds of thousands of men died in the trenches, the media pushed the narrative of Ukraine winning, of Russian efforts to restore the Soviet Union, downplaying the losses of the Ukrainian army, and ignoring the de-Russification policies and the brutal conscription of Ukrainian men. All of this was done under the banner of "standing with Ukraine," irrespective of what Ukrainians actually wanted.
Even as Ukraine now faces disaster and we could end up in a direct war with Russia, there is no willingness to recognize that Russia has any legitimate security concerns. Instead, everything happens in a vacuum and the media remains committed to the narrative of an evil Russian enemy and the logical conclusion is therefore further escalation rather than exploring paths towards a workable peace.
So if you want to understand why it's become impossible to even discuss peace, why diplomacy has been criminalized, I advise that we look towards the very dangerous media coverage and remember the warnings of Walter Lippmann about simplifying complex conflicts into a simple struggle between good and evil. So thank you for your attention.
[Moderator response]
Thank you Glenn for your statement but not only for participation in making this speech but also for your scientific work and public work and I would suggest to colleagues to look into your books and articles and also the podcast that you have.
Let me add some further comments which there was no time to make during my speech.
So resolving conflicts and wars can be extremely difficult as human nature and the condition of conflict resolution often clash because human beings are a group animal. We are largely organized by groups for meaning and security and it's also therefore in human nature to divide ourselves into the in-group (us) versus the out-group (them, the other).
So when human beings experience an external threat, it's in human nature to seek solidarity within the group for security and to survive. And we create therefore clear divisions between the in-group and out-group by contrasting our virtue with our opponent's evil nature. When the white gets whiter, the black gets blacker. We see that the gray area disappears. And this is what prevents the individual from diverging too much from the group. And essentially people conform to their own in-group and do not even discuss the concerns and interests of the out-group as this could be seen as having sympathies for the adversary.
Now this is an instinct in human nature which can be exploited further by political propaganda and indeed political propaganda is largely organized around developing the stereotypes for the in-group versus the out-group and all the complexities of a conflict is simplified into a mere struggle between the good guys and the bad guys. So this is human nature. The problem is this framing prevents conflict resolution because as I said in my speech, the point of departure in international security is to reduce the security competition. And to do so, we have to recognize the security concerns of the opponent. Especially when you're fighting a nuclear power that considers itself to be facing an existential threat and fighting a war for survival.
Now a key case study has been the first world war when the US government presented Germany as pure evil in order to mobilize a reluctant public for war. Now this then was sold to the public as the war against the ultimate evil, a dehumanized German adversary. This was the war that would quote "be the war to end all wars." It was the war to make the world safe for democracies. Essentially with such a framing only total victory can create peace.
And here is why people like Walter Lippmann went from being well to a large extent supporters of the use of propaganda to becoming critics because it resulted in ignoring possible diplomatic solutions to end the war — a workable peace as Lippmann framed it. And even after Germany had been defeated, we saw that this prevented lasting peace because when you fight pure evil, you can't restore a balance of power such as was done with bringing France, you know, giving it a seat around the table after the Napoleonic war. Instead, we saw that the Germans had to be properly defeated. It was given a humiliating defeat after the first world war. And it was also a defeat which was intended to keep Germany permanently weak. And as we later learned, this set the conditions for another world war. So while it might seem very patriotic to present the adversary as pure evil in order to signal loyalty to the in-group, it definitely goes against our own interest to the extent it undermines stability to create a permanent peace.
Now let me quote some of the work of Raymond Aron who famously warned in 1962 about dividing states into good and evil. He wrote quote: "Idealistic diplomacy slips often into fanaticism. It divides states into good and evil, into peace-loving and bellicose. It envisions a permanent peace by the punishment of the latter and the triumph of the former. The idealist believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crime."
Now this has also been my main concern after the cold war when the west established itself as a collective hegemon and insisted it was a force for good. All conflicts were then framed as being liberal democracies versus authoritarians, which is a nice placeholder for good guys versus bad guys.
Indeed, after I gave my speech there at the UN Security Council, some critical comments predictably came from the European delegations. And to summarize, this was essentially: me making excuses for Russia, the West is not the problem, and the decision of going to war was solely made by Russia. In other words, the entire assessment is: "We — what are you saying? Which narratives are you pushing?" The only way they are assessed is: are you legitimizing us or them?
But my point is this is not about taking one side or the other. It's about the inability to even discuss security concerns of our opponents. And this is necessary — to take the security concerns of our opponents into account is required to predict their reactions and thus calibrate our foreign policy accordingly in order to maximize our security. It was very hard to convince anyone that the policies we have pushed now have enhanced our security or done anything good for Ukraine.
There's also this assumption that the west does not actually do propaganda because the west consists of liberal democracies and propaganda is what authoritarian states do. Now this is an amazing demonstration of propaganda itself because propaganda used to be considered a normal state craft. People would refer to themselves as propagandists and it only became a dirty word as the Germans used it in the 1930s. Edward Bernays which is considered to be the main author of the initial literature on political propaganda therefore contributed to essentially rebrand it as public relations because what our adversaries do is propaganda. What we do is public relations and this is to a large extent what propaganda also does. It changes the language to convince the public as opposed to using rational arguments. So we create one set of language for what we do versus another for what our adversaries are doing. Again, it helps to boost the legitimacy of the in-group and delegitimize the out-group, which is good for internal solidarity, but terrible for resolving conflicts if we can't even compare our policies with our opponents.
Now it can also be said that there was a near complete consensus among the original scholars on political propaganda a century ago that liberal democracies were actually more reliant on propaganda because when sovereignty is transferred to the people it would then become more necessary to manage the masses — from Edward Bernays to Walter Lippmann this was not a controversial statement. Indeed there was a clear correlation between expanding the voting rights and the need to simplify political discourse — to present conflicts as well complexity of politics as a simple struggle between good and evil. We saw this correlation as it became more challenging to manage the masses and even during the cold war it was also recognized by many scholars that the US and the UK had more efficient propaganda because a key component of propaganda is source credibility. And while the Soviets only relied on state apparatus and everyone could see who was delivering the messages — for the British and the Americans they could then whitewash or siphon their propaganda through non-governmental institutions, private industries and indeed this is how propaganda is also done today. We use non-governmental organizations and other institutions to make it sound more credible.
And last, let me just say that it's extremely frustrating for an academic like myself who has for more than 20 years warned against this war we're now seeing in Ukraine, which I've been warning would destroy Ukraine and possibly instigate a direct war between NATO and Russia, which could then develop into a nuclear exchange. In such a scenario, we would all lose.
Yet, every time I've warned about this over the past 20 years, it's essentially met a wall. It's interpreted solely as then taking the side of Russia because by recognizing the Russian security concerns and how they will respond, it's then simply dismissed as taking the side of the out-group and thus even seen as a betrayal of the in-group.
So, this is what I've seen over the past years indeed:
And over the past four years, I've seen lie after lie intended to create the conditions for a long war as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were sacrificed in a war that could not be won under the banner of "standing with Ukraine." And I've listened to leaders arguing that weapons are the path to peace while they criminalized diplomacy. There's no way this can be explained as being in our interest or being even in the Ukrainians' interests. But nonetheless, it all operates under the banner of being pro-US. And if you dissent, then you're pro-Russian.
And what was this all for? Very predictably, Ukraine is being destroyed with horrible humanitarian consequences. And in the wider strategic framing, we see that relations with Russia is destroyed for decades and decades to come at this critical point in time when the world is shifting into multipolarity and we would definitely have been in our interest to keep Russia on our side of the ledger. We see Europe now being in systemic decline with economic problems which can't be fixed without ending the division of Europe, security problems and of course political fragmentation which we will see in the months to come. Now we also see that the international system is falling apart, international law itself disintegrating and the future of the UN no longer being clear.
So time and time again there has been many pathways towards a workable peace. Yet every time this is rejected as Putin is presented as Hitler and Russia is an evil adversary which we can't even make peace with. And it always goes back to the same original problem, the inability to even discuss the security concerns of their opponent.
And this, as I mentioned in my speech, also applies to China, Iran, or whatever country we now see as being the bad guy.
So, thank you for your attention.
Takk fyrir. Ég vildi að ég gæti verið þarna í eigin persónu, en þakka ykkur fyrir boðið og það eru mikil forréttindi að fá að tala hér í dag. Ég vil fjalla um hvernig átökin í Úkraínu eiga sér stað, eins og þú sagðir, bæði á vígvellinum og í upplýsingarýminu, og hvers vegna við ættum að hafa áhyggjur af því hvernig fjölmiðlar hagræða frásögnum og mála andstæðinginn upp sem skrímsli.
Einhverjar innsæisríkustu bókmenntirnar um pólitískan áróður koma frá Walter Lippmann í kjölfar starfa hans fyrir bandarísk stjórnvöld í fyrri heimsstyrjöldinni. Lippmann áttaði sig á því að frjálslynd lýðræðisríki hefðu tilhneigingu til að setja átök fram sem baráttu milli góðs og ills til að virkja stuðning almennings við stríð. Hin mikla áhætta, samkvæmt Lippmann, var sú að þegar almenningur trúði því að andstæðingurinn væri tær illska, þá myndu almenningur og stjórnmálamenn einnig hafna hvers kyns raunhæfum friði, því í baráttu milli góðs og ills er málamiðlun friðþæging og friður krefst þess að stríð sé háð þar sem hið góða verður að sigra hið illa.
Þetta er djúpstætt vandamál því útgangspunkturinn í alþjóðlegu öryggi er viðurkenning á öryggissamkeppni, þar sem viðleitni eins lands til að auka öryggi sitt getur dregið úr öryggi annarra. Fyrsta skrefið í átt að sameiginlegum friði er því að setja okkur í spor andstæðingsins og viðurkenna þessar gagnkvæmu öryggisáhyggjur. Hins vegar, í baráttu milli góðs og ills, verður jafnvel skilningur á andstæðingnum að landráðum. Við ættum því að vera skelfingu lostin yfir því að stjórnmálaleiðtogar okkar, sem og fjölmiðlar, ræða ekki lengur einu sinni öryggisáhyggjur andstæðinganna. Þeir sem reyna að sjá heiminn frá hinni hliðinni eru einfaldlega fordæmdir sem Pútínistar, pöndukrúttarar (e. panda huggers) eða afsökunarbeðjendur fyrir erkiklerkana (e. Ayatollah apologists). Ef kynslóðirnar á undan okkur hefðu haft þetta þroskastig er mjög ólíklegt að við hefðum lifað kalda stríðið af.
Það er því mjög augljóst að fjölmiðlar segja ekki alltaf frá hlutlægum veruleika. Sannfærðir um að þeir séu að heyja hina góðu baráttu, smíða fjölmiðlar oft sinn eigin félagslega veruleika og blaðamenn verða upplýsingahermenn. Til dæmis hótar viðurkenning á mannfalli úkraínska hersins að draga úr stuðningi almennings við stríðið. Sömuleiðis hótar viðurkenning á því að viðskiptaþvinganir virki ekki að draga úr stuðningi almennings við þvinganirnar. Þannig hunsa fjölmiðlar oft þennan veruleika og halda sig þess í stað við frásagnirnar til að tryggja að almenningur haldi tryggð við átökin. En eins og Lippmann benti á, þá fjarlægja þeir með því allar leiðir að raunhæfum friði.
Við sjáum því að Rússland þarf að leika þetta tvöfalda hlutverk í fjölmiðlum eins og við höfum öll séð. Annars vegar verður það að vera vonlaust afturhaldssamt og veikt. Samt er það líka yfirþyrmandi öflug ógn við Vesturlönd. Okkur er semsagt sagt að Rússland sé án árangurs í Úkraínu, en samt geti það lagt undir sig Evrópu ef við stöðvum það ekki. Þessu er ætlað að miðla þeim skilaboðum til vestræns almennings að andstæðingurinn sé mjög hættulegur en jafnframt að fullvissa almenning um að auðvelt sé að sigra Rússland ef við bara höldum stríðinu áfram.
Grunnfrásögnin í fjölmiðlum í þessum átökum hefur verið hin svokallaða tilefnislausa innrás Rússa. Þetta er mikilvæg frásögn því hún gefur í skyn að Rússland sé útþenslu- og heimsvaldasinnað veldi í stað þess að vera að bregðast við öryggisógnum. Það er engin umræða um frásögnina um tilefnislausa innrás í fjölmiðlum og hvers kyns áskorun við þessa frásögn er venjulega svívirt og ritskoðuð fyrir að réttlæta meinta innrás. Og ég segi að frásögnin um tilefnislausa innrás sé hættuleg vegna þess að hún gefur í skyn að hvers kyns málamiðlun sé friðþæging sem verðlaunar árásaraðilann, sem hvetur síðan til frekari yfirgangs. Þannig er okkur sagt að friður krefjist þess að útvega vopn til að hækka kostnaðinn.
Nú, eins og í öllum öðrum átökum eftir kalda stríðið, sjáum við að fjölmiðlar lýsa andstæðingunum sem enn einni endurholdgun Hitlers til að minna almenning á að stríð er friður og stjórnmálasambönd eru friðþæging, eða eins og fyrrverandi framkvæmdastjóri NATO hélt fram, að vopnin séu leiðin til friðar. Aftur, þetta er hættuleg frásögn því ef þessi átök voru framkölluð, þá erum við að stigmagna og blanda okkur beint í stríð gegn stærsta kjarnorkuveldi heims, sem telur sig vera í tilvistarlegum átökum.
Og við höfum séð að síðan á tíunda áratugnum vöruðu margir leiðandi vestrænir stjórnmálamenn, yfirmenn leyniþjónustu, sendiherrar og aðrir stjórnarerindrekar einmitt við þessum afleiðingum af stækkun NATO. Stækkun NATO fól í sér að hætta við samninga um öryggi allrar Evrópu og skipta álfunni þess í stað upp á nýtt, endurræsa rökfræði kalda stríðsins og berjast síðan í sameiginlegu hverfi um hvar ætti að draga hinar nýju skiptilínur. Aftur, enginn annar en George Kennan sagði í viðtali árið 1998 að stækkunarstefna NATO myndi koma af stað nýju köldu stríði. Og hann spáði, tilvitnun: „Auðvitað munu koma slæm viðbrögð frá Rússlandi.“ Og þá munu NATO-útvíkkunarsinnarnir segja: „Við sögðum ykkur alltaf að svona væru Rússar, en þetta er bara rangt.“
Hins vegar sjáum við að fjölmiðlar geta ekki viðurkennt hið augljósa; að stækkun NATO framkallaði þessi átök, því það myndi hætta á að réttlæta hernaðaraðgerðir Rússa. Samt fóru NATO-ríkin yfir lokarauðu línuna með því að draga Úkraínu inn í sporbraut NATO og byggja hana upp sem framvarðarríki gegn Rússlandi. Hafið í huga að Angela Merkel viðurkenndi einu sinni að það að bjóða Úkraínu aðildaráætlun að NATO yrði túlkað af Moskvu sem, tilvitnun, „stríðsyfirlýsing“. Fyrrverandi sendiherra Breta í Rússlandi, Rodric Lyne, sagði eftirfarandi um að draga Úkraínu inn í NATO. Tilvitnun: „Það var heimskulegt á öllum stigum á þeim tíma. Ef þú vilt hefja stríð við Rússland er það besta leiðin til að gera það.“ Í minnisblaði frá forstjóra CIA, William Burns, hélt hann því einnig fram að tilraunir til að draga Úkraínu inn í NATO myndu líklega hrinda af stað rússneskri hernaðaríhlutun, sem Burns tók fram að væri eitthvað sem Rússar vildu ekki gera.
Nú virðast þetta allt vera framúrskarandi skilgreiningar á orðinu „framkallað“ (e. provoked). Samt megum við ekki nota þetta orð. Og í febrúar 2014 studdu NATO-ríkin engu að síður valdarán til að draga Úkraínu inn í sporbraut NATO. Fjölmiðlar seldu valdaránið engu að síður sem lýðræðisbyltingu jafnvel þótt Janúkóvítsj hefði verið kjörinn í frjálsum og sanngjörnum kosningum. Brottvikning hans og jafnvel óeirðirnar á Maidan nutu ekki meirihlutastuðnings meðal Úkraínumanna og það braut gegn úkraínsku stjórnarskránni.
Og í örstutta stund árið 2014 sögðu vestrænir fjölmiðlar frá því að nýju yfirvöldin í Kænugarði væru að ráðast á Donbas og drepa óbreytta borgara sem höfnuðu lögmæti valdaránsins. Og CNN spurði jafnvel hvort fólkið í Donbas myndi nokkurn tímann aftur leyfa Kænugarði að drottna yfir sér. En skömmu síðar var fullri fjölmiðlasamstöðu komið á og andspyrnan í Donbas var dregin upp sem einber rússnesk aðgerð sem miðaði að því að vinna gegn lýðræðisþróun Úkraínu.
Nú höfum við komist að því að strax daginn eftir valdaránið komu bandarískar og breskar leyniþjónustur á samstarfi við nýja yfirmann leyniþjónustunnar í Kænugarði til að endurbyggja úkraínsku leyniþjónustuna frá grunni sem staðgengil gegn Rússlandi. Við komumst að því að ríkissaksóknari Úkraínu hélt því fram að Bandaríkin stjórnuðu Úkraínu eins og léni eftir valdaránið. Við komumst að því að þingmenn voru handteknir. Sumir voru sviptir ríkisborgararétti. Fjölmiðlar voru hreinsaðir. Rússneskri tungu var útrýmt. Rétttrúnaðarkirkjan var hreinsuð. Og óbreyttir borgarar í Donbas voru drepnir ár eftir ár. Þjóðernissinnar og frjáls félagasamtök, fjármögnuð af Vesturlöndum, grófu undan Minsk 2 friðarsamkomulaginu og settu Zelenskí skýrar rauðar línur um að innleiða ekki friðarumbeðið sem hann hafði unnið kosningar út á árið 2019.
Og við sáum að æðsti ráðgjafi fyrrverandi forseta Frakklands hélt því fram að undirritun sáttmálans um stefnumótandi samstarf Bandaríkjanna og Úkraínu í nóvember 2021, tilvitnun, „sannfærði Rússa um að þeir yrðu að gera árás eða verða fyrir árás.“ Ég held að það sé óhætt að segja að ef Rússland eða Kína hefðu gert eitthvað af þessu, segjum, gagnvart Mexíkó, hefðum við örugglega skilgreint það sem ögrandi. Samt getum við ekki gert þetta í okkar fjölmiðlum.
Svo til að selja söguna um rússneskt landvinningastríð ýttu fjölmiðlar frá fyrsta degi undir hugmyndina um „allsherjarinnrás“, sem gaf í skyn að Rússland beitti fullum hernaðarmætti til að leggja undir sig Úkraínu í stað þess að þvinga Úkraínu til að endurheimta hlutleysi sitt. Og af þessari ástæðu sjáum við að fjölmiðlar geta ekki upplýst almenning um að lágur fjöldi rússneskra hermanna og upphaflegar aðgerðir samræmdust alls ekki landvinningum. Þvert á móti bentu þær til þess ásetnings að halda Úkraínu utan NATO.
Fjölmiðlar geta ekki upplýst almenning um að á fyrsta degi innrásarinnar staðfesti Zelenskí að Moskva hefði haft samband við þá til að ræða friðarsamninga á grundvelli þess að Úkraína gengi ekki í NATO, sem Zelenskí samþykkti.
Fjölmiðlar geta ekki upplýst almenning um hvernig Zelenskí sagði sjálfur í mars 2022. Tilvitnun: „Það eru þeir á Vesturlöndum sem hafa ekkert á móti löngu stríði því þetta myndi þýða að Rússland örmagnaðist, jafnvel þótt það þýði endalok Úkraínu og kosti mannslíf Úkraínumanna.“
Svo fjölmiðlar geta heldur ekki upplýst almenning um skemmdarverkin á friðarviðræðunum í Istanbúl, eftir hverjar utanríkisráðherra Tyrklands komst að þeirri niðurstöðu, tilvitnun: „Ég fékk þá tilfinningu að það væru þeir innan aðildarríkja NATO sem vilja að stríðið haldi áfram. Látum stríðið halda áfram og Rússland veikist. Þeim er nokkurn veginn sama um ástandið í Úkraínu.“
Svo í stað þess að láta fjölmiðla ræða evrópskan öryggisarkitektúr sem gæti dregið úr öryggissamkeppninni og komið í veg fyrir að Úkraína verði vígvöllur í uppskiptri Evrópu, hafa fjölmiðlar í staðinn málað Rússland upp sem hreina illsku og selt þá sögu að jafnvel diplómatíu ætti að hafna. Jafnvel þegar hundruð þúsunda manna létu lífið í skotgröfunum, ýttu fjölmiðlar undir frásögnina af sigri Úkraínu, af tilraunum Rússa til að endurreisa Sovétríkin, gerðu lítið úr manntjóni úkraínska hersins og hunsuðu stefnuna um af-rússneskuvæðingu og hina hrottalegu þvinguðu herkvaðningu úkraínskra karlmanna. Allt þetta var gert undir merkjum þess að „standa með Úkraínu“, óháð því hvað Úkraínumenn vildu í raun og veru.
Jafnvel nú þegar Úkraína stendur frammi fyrir hörmungum og við gætum endað í beinu stríði við Rússland, er enginn vilji til að viðurkenna að Rússland hafi neinar lögmætar öryggisáhyggjur. Í staðinn gerist allt í tómarúmi og fjölmiðlar halda tryggð við frásögnina af vondum rússneskum óvin og rökrétt niðurstaða er því frekari stigmögnun frekar en að kanna leiðir að raunhæfum friði.
Þannig að ef þið viljið skilja hvers vegna það er orðið ómögulegt að ræða frið, hvers vegna diplómatía hefur verið gerð glæpsamleg, ráðlegg ég að við horfum til hinnar mjög hættulegu fjölmiðlaumfjöllunar og munum varnaðarorð Walters Lippmann um að einfalda flókin átök í einfalda baráttu milli góðs og ills. Svo þakka ykkur fyrir athyglina.