Last month I came across a headline — amidst growing concerns of a potential Ukraine invasion by Russian military forces — that read “’NATO Is a Cancer: Will We Cure It?” It was run in a pro-Kremlin newspaper that argued “Russia must take unconventional steps” in its relationship with its neighbors from the West.
At best, this line is intriguing: The metaphor is often-times used to describe an entity that “attacks from the inside”; one that “invades” an otherwise healthy body. At worst, this language should sound alarms: It offers insight on the frame of thinking — the unprovoked paranoia — within the Vladamir Putin-run-Kremlin. One that owns an unwarranted fear that Ukraine, along with the rest of NATO allies, poses a threat to the Russian state. And this insight holds a great weight. It has led to calls that Russia is teetering dangerously close over the Ukraine border and has had many preparing for a rather bleak future where Russia seeks to dismantle the sovereign state. Others, however, are calling Russia’s bluff.
In 2021 U.S. intelligence revealed a document that featured satellite photos confirming Russian troops peering eerily close over Ukraine’s border. President Joe Biden said he is awaiting an invasion. Journalists are preparing their belongings should they need to sojourn and report from war zones. Yet some U.S. officials continue to undermine President Vladimir V. Putin’s intentions, claiming that the intelligence should not, and does not, confirm he has decided to carry out the purported war plan. Perhaps they are relying on the combination of threats the Biden administration has employed from within its arsenal to be enough to deter the Russians from attacking. When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warned Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, that the U.S. and its allies would impose economic sanctions should Russia respond with aggression against Ukraine, Lavrov scoffed in indifference.
Clearly, the alarms are blaring within Washington. But Russia’s creeping towards the Ukraine border hasn’t sparked enough worry within the U.S., — so as to provide arms and further means of deterrence to Ukraine — albeit Russian officials’ language regarding the West just might. And righteously so. President Vladimir Putin has accused the U.S. and its allies of aggression — accusations they have offered no evidence for; Russia fears Ukraine’s joining NATO and claims it a threat to Russian sovereignty; the Kremlin has discredited Ukraine’s right to self-determination and statehood; they argue Ukraine is but a derivative of a country: one akin to a renegade. Or a possession gone rogue. Almost like a cancer — one that must be, eventually, “cured.”
The alarms should blare louder. Purely because the Kremlin’s rhetoric is not borne from defense or strategy, but rather from a quiet and dangerous ethos. One that argues Ukraine belongs to Russia, or conversely be irradicated. This is why we find it harder than usual to parse through Putin’s plans. We often rely on different efforts to anticipate and prevent large-scale violence and conflict before it erupts. But we cannot predict with certainty in individual cases if states will face war. The variables that lead up to war are simply unobservable ex ante. As in Ukraine and the rest of the western world, they have not posed or directed any imminent threat towards Russia’s security. If anything, Russia has acted as the sole aggressor. We must, then, rely on a form of discourse analysis: one that involves understanding language, how it’s used, and why. Russia’s teasing with Ukraine’s border perhaps doesn’t confirm an impending occupation; their language, however, might.
Against any conflicting school of thought: The war in Ukraine is now a matter of when it’ll ensue, not if. And when it does it will involve violence and destruction. It will likely involve the use of chemical and biological warfare, as Russian allies in Syria have done so in the past, making a vile conflict even more so. It’ll raise a threat to the security of neighboring states who are members of the Atlantic Alliance. And it will, drawing from historical wars, divide the U.S. internally; the question that’ll divide us is thus: Should the U.S. intervene? We readily criticize, particularly among political lines, whether we ought to concern ourselves in foreign affairs — especially wars. However, this decision lay within the President’s purview. United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp (1936) held exactly that: that the chief executive’s role in involving itself and the state in foreign matters is whole and absolute. And although we have no say in what the President decides, we do have a say in who sits in the role. The impending conflict within Ukraine will likely trickle for years to come. And when Russia acts — yes, when — It will introduce an era of the 21st century marked by cross-fire. We must vote wisely in the forthcoming election. World powers, and those leading, are key in preventing that fire from spreading.
The West has responded in what appears to be naïve surprise towards Russia’s actions in the past. Towards Russia’s unwarranted aggression, its autocratic ambitions, its attempt to belittle Western alliances, its interference in our own political elections. U.S. intelligence revealed that Russian military intelligence officers had been indicted for hacking into computers of U.S. entities in 2016. That same year, our own investigations revealed that foreign government-sponsored hackers had infiltrated Cornell’s networks. Although analyses of the malware’s code syntax revealed the government responsible for the act, it was never made public, according to those familiar with the breach.
There is no doubt that we must amend how we interpret and prevent threats to democracy. We must protect those whose democracy is at risk. Failing to do so reinforces dictators who prey on democratic states. It lets them grow, infiltrate with no regulation or remorse. Our response to Ukraine will come as a prime example. If Russia’s ever-growing forces along Ukraine’s border doesn’t raise enough brows, perhaps the subtle weaponization of their words against Ukraine will: To call Ukraine and NATO a cancer implies a concerning view on the state of our international order. To ask whether it, “we,” are “curable” implies intentions that are much, much darker.
My role as a scientist has always been to delineate the phenomena of the natural world. To understand them, their mechanisms, in all their complexity and prestige, and understand how they are used for good and for evil. As an academic, my goal is to question and be skeptical of everything, even language, until the proper data allows us to draw logical conclusions. Therefore I kept running circles, perhaps in macabre fascination, on that headline. Why? Because there is no such thing as “curing” cancer. Cancer is tissue whose genetic laws have been permanently broken, thus it continues to replicate and infiltrate as such. The cancer itself can never be cured, it must simply be targeted at the core, where the perpetrator of the malfunction is to be removed. There is no curing it; there is only exterminating it.
There is an irony here, for it is Russian forces who have shown that they are the ones to behave malignantly. Putin has made an effort to show that he can infiltrate territory and sit in it comfortably. And Russia is telling us Ukraine is its next victim.
Hugo Amador is a student at Cornell University. He studies Biological Sciences and Literatures in English. He can be reached at [email protected].