Before being elected President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first Commander of NATO. In February 1951, a few months after taking office, he wrote the following, "If in 10 years all the American troops stationed in Europe for the purpose of ensuring national defense have not returned to the United States, then this project, NATO, will have failed." The troops did not return, actually, their presence in Europe did not cease to increase. Not only that, but once the Soviet Union disintegrated and contrary to the solemn and hollow promises of the main leaders of Western governments (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Helmut Kohl in Germany, Tony Blair in the United Kingdom... etc.) in the sense that "NATO would not move an inch to the East," as a matter of fact, this criminal organization transferred supplies and troops to the very borders of Russia. How come! Weren’t the enemies of the West the Soviet Union and communism? No. The enemy was, and still is, Russia, an overly large and powerful country whose mere presence, whether under a communist or capitalist regime, is an obstacle to the United States' goal of world domination, as Noam Chomsky repeatedly observed. 

When Bill Clinton kicked off NATO expansion in 1997, Eisenhower's granddaughter, Susan, gathered the signatures of 49 renowned specialists (military, diplomatic, and academic) and published an open letter on June 26 saying that the "plan to expand NATO is a political mistake of historic proportions." Susan took into account the opinion that shortly before - on February 5 in an article published in the New York Times - had been expressed by none other than George Kennan, the diplomat who, with his famous "Long Telegram" of February 22, 1946, sent to President Harry Truman (and signed under the pseudonym of Mister X) had been the architect of the policy of "containment" of Soviet expansionism that shortly after would lead to the creation of NATO. Deeply disturbed by Clinton's intentions, Kennan wrote in that 1997 piece that "NATO expansion would be the most tragic mistake of US policy in the entire post-Cold War era ... because it would advance Russia's foreign policy in a direction that would definitely not be the one we wanted.” [1] 

Clinton, and with him the entire financial-military-industrial complex, ignored the veteran diplomat's warnings and continued with his policy. Encouraging wars and military spending was what Washington was supposed to do since its politicians in the Administration and Congress finance their political careers with contributions from big business in that sector. The USSR had not finished collapsing when the Deputy Secretary of Defense of George W. Bush Sr. Paul Wolfowitz produced a "Guide for Defense Planning" that was leaked to the press on March 7, 1992, stating in its first section that “our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, whether in the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat … which requires that we strive to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources, under consolidated control, would be sufficient to generate global power." The scandal was huge and the extreme unilateralism of its content led to it being described, even in certain establishment media, as “imperialist”. It also caused anxiety that its author raised, without further hesitation, the importance of "preventive military interventions" to neutralize possible threats from other nations and prevent autocratic regimes from becoming superpowers. Of course, the addressee of Wolfowitz’s paper was clearly post-Soviet Russia. After the document was leaked to the press, the Pentagon published a watered-down version of it, in fact, a mere attempt at "harm reduction" covering, unsuccessfully, its most brutal expressions with a more diplomatic language but without abandoning in the slightest the fundamental theses of the “Guide”. [2]  

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The reconstruction of Russia's economic and military power encouraged the appearance of new reflections and "policy papers" recommending various courses of action to the White House. The military advances of that country were evident in its decisive role in the defeat of the jihadist insurgency in Syria, a swamp created by Washington's decision that wanted to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad with the help of the Islamic State and its serial decapitators. The same thing happened when, after the 2014 coup in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin returned Crimea to Russian jurisdiction in a flashing operation. But in 2019, a fundamental document was published by none other than the Rand Corporation and whose title says it all: “Overextending and unbalancing Russia”. According to its authors, its pages "list non-violent and cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could promote in the economic, political and military realms to stress Russia, overextending and unbalancing its economy, its armed forces and the stability of its political regime. The document carefully examines the various areas for each of which it presents several options. For example, in the economy, imposing sanctions and trade barriers, ending Europe's dependence on Russian gas, favoring American gas exports to Europe, and promoting the emigration of scientists and people with high technical training to deprive Russia of this type of human resource. For each of these options, the probability of success of the measure, its benefits, and also its costs and risks were estimated, and from there a recommendation was formulated.

In the military field, the Report contemplated, first of all, providing lethal weaponry to Ukraine (a euphemistic way of not saying "weapons of mass destruction!"), increasing support for the Syrian rebels, promoting liberalization in Belarus, expanding ties between the United States and the countries of the South Caucasus, and reducing Russian influence in Central Asia. Again, each of these alternatives is weighed in terms of the probability of success, estimating its benefits and its costs. [3]  

Conclusion

As we said before reading this document and as we ratified even more strongly afterward, the Ukraine war was immorally provoked by the United States and its European allies. Without worrying about the terrible human costs of the war, which the Western powers now denounce with crocodile tears, they closed all options to Russia, which even at one point even had proposed starting talks to cooperate with NATO, an attitude that did not provoke in the very democratic and humanist Western powers the slightest intention of even starting to talk about the subject. None of the just Russian demands in terms of security were heard, as if a stable and secure world order could be built for everyone, except for a superpower like Russia, harassed from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The evil plans of Wolfowitz and the Rand are irrefutably eloquent. They concocted the road map that the United States has chosen to destroy Russia as it did with the former Yugoslavia, with the complicity of the despicable European governments. As of now, in late April 2022, no one can predict how this war will end. However, it is worth remembering with Clausewitz that for centuries Russia was attacked, harassed, and invaded. In each case, at first, it seemed that its debacle would be inevitable, but it always knew how to reverse what seemed to be an inexorable disaster and defeat its aggressors. Will it be different this time?

References:

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html
[2] "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls For Insuring No Rivals Develop." The New York Times. , 3/8/1992.
[3] The report, which I strongly recommend to read, can be found at https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf