Controlling the Narrative, Controlling the Future: Ukraine in Foreign Policy (Oliver Boyd-Barrett)

Professor Oliver Boyd-Barrett reflects on the distant past, the historical conditions and political agreements made between the United States and the crumbling union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which Western elites refuse to address at present within broader efforts to bring the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia to a close. The discussion is framed by a persistent problem outlined by Dr. Boyd-Barrett, which tends to hamper most negotiated settlements for peace: the carefully selected framing of war often includes strictly drawn boundaries around permissible discussion of initial causes of hostility. Corporate media further intensify the problem by ignoring the observable initial causes of belligerence and, thus, keep the public they claim to serve in a general state of relative ignorance.