From the Memory Hole 2022: Bernie Sanders’ Unheeded Ukraine Warnings

From the Memory Hole: When Bernie Was Right About Ukraine

While Trump orders peace in Ukraine and the narrative shifts from Biden’s “forever war” to a new Pax Americana, let’s retrieve another prophetic voice from Orwell’s memory hole. On February 10, 2022, just two weeks before Russian forces crossed into Ukraine, Bernie Sanders stood on the Senate floor to deliver a warning that now reads like a tragic prophecy.

Sanders, like Corbyn, saw through the war hawks’ simplistic narrative. “I am extremely concerned when I hear the familiar drumbeats in Washington, the bellicose rhetoric that gets amplified before every war, demanding that we must ‘show strength,’ ‘get tough’ and not engage in ‘appeasement.'” Today, as Starmer echoes those same drumbeats, the warning resonates more than ever.

Both men understood the complex historical forces at play. While condemning Putin’s actions, Sanders dared to speak the unspeakable: “When Ukraine became independent after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russian leaders made clear their concerns about the prospect of former Soviet states becoming part of NATO and positioning hostile military forces along Russia’s border. U.S. officials recognised these concerns as legitimate at the time.”

“Europe, for the first time in almost 80 years, is faced with the threat of a major invasion,” Sanders began. “A large nation threatens a smaller, less powerful neighbour, surrounding it on three sides with tens of thousands of troops, tanks and artillery.” But what followed wasn’t the typical Washington hawkish rhetoric—it was a clear-eyed analysis of how we got there.

“Wars have unintended consequences,” he cautioned, invoking the ghosts of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. “They rarely turn out the way the planners and experts tell us they will. Just ask the mothers of the soldiers who were killed or wounded in action during those wars. Just ask the millions of civilians who became ‘collateral damage.'”

Sanders dared to speak what the war Party wanted buried: NATO’s eastward expansion had consequences. Citing former Defense Secretary William Perry, he noted, “In the early years… the United States deserves much of the blame… Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand.” Even Bill Burns, now Biden’s CIA director, had warned in 2008 that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite.”

“A simplistic refusal to recognise the complex roots of the tensions in the region undermines the ability of negotiators to reach a peaceful resolution.

I know it is not very popular in Washington to consider the perspectives of our adversaries, but I think it is important in formulating good policy. 

I think it is helpful to consider this: One of the precipitating factors of this crisis, at least from Russia’s perspective, is the prospect of an enhanced security relationship between Ukraine and the United States and Western Europe, including what Russia sees as the threat of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), a military alliance originally created in 1949 to confront the Soviet Union.”’ -Bernie Sanders 

His prediction of the war’s economic impact was chillingly accurate: “massive economic upheaval – with impacts on energy, banking, food, and the day-to-day needs of ordinary people throughout the entire world.” Look at Britain today: a cost-of-living crisis driven not by scarcity but by energy companies’ record profits, banks celebrating their most profitable three years in over a decade, all while working families struggle to heat their homes.

Most prophetically, Sanders exposed Washington’s hypocrisy: “It is hypocritical for the United States to insist that we do not accept the principle of ‘spheres of influence.’ For the last 200 years our country has operated under the Monroe Doctrine… Does anyone really believe that the United States would not have something to say if, for example, Mexico was to form a military alliance with a U.S. adversary?”

The truth Sanders and Corbyn both understood: this war served the few at the expense of the many. As Carl Gershman, head of the CIA-tied National Endowment for Democracy, revealed in 2013, “Ukraine is the biggest prize.” The goal wasn’t peace or democracy—it was regime change, first in Kyiv, then Moscow.

“Countries should be free to make their own foreign policy choices,” Sanders argued, “but making those choices wisely requires a serious consideration of the costs and benefits.” Three years on, the body count rises while defence contractors count their billions. The only losers in this racket, as always, are the working class who fight and die in rich men’s wars.

As Sanders concluded then, “That is not weakness. That is not appeasement. Bringing people together to resolve conflicts non-violently is strength, and it is the right thing to do.” Three years of bloodshed later, we’re finally reaching the diplomatic solution he advocated for—but only after the military-industrial complex has gorged itself on the profits of war.

Now, as peace finally approaches—not through diplomacy but through Trump’s imperial decree—we face a bitter truth: Sanders and Corbyn weren’t just right, they were prophetic. The real tragedy isn’t that their warnings went unheeded; it’s that the war machine needed them to be silenced. Their crime wasn’t being wrong about Ukraine—it was being right about the racket of war itself. As another crisis inevitably looms on the horizon, the question isn’t whether they’ll try to bury these truths again—they will. The question is whether we’ll let them.

Paul Knaggs