Cardi B: NATO Is Not Blameless
Did the U.S. and its allies create the hostile conditions allowing Russia to annex Ukraine?
Bernie Sanders protegee Cardi B is speaking out against corruption and despotism once again, this time with an early morning video polemic against Vladimir Putin’s violent siege of Eastern Ukraine.
Speaking out comes with considerable risk for Cardi: “Sometimes I feel like I have such a big platform that if I don’t say the right things I might get killed.”
But she carries on. “I’m really not on NATO’s side. I’m really not on Russia’s side. I’m actually on the citizens’ side, because at the end of the day the world is having a crisis right now.”
She isn’t wrong on either account. NATO has condemned Putin’s recognition of independence from Ukraine in two Russia-backed separatist regions in the eastern part of the country, but NATO is not an innocent bystander in all of this. The United States pushed NATO expansion after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, especially to nations immediately bordering Russia, presenting a threat.
Cardi’s nuanced discourse holds us all accountable.
